Nude Woman Reclining, Seen from the Back

Van Gogh painted almost no nudes, which makes this one, from 1887, unusual in his work. He was in Paris then, living with his brother Theo and taking in everything the city's younger painters were doing, brightening his palette after the dark Dutch years. In 1886 he had worked in Fernand Cormon's studio, drawing from the live model, and a small group of nudes came out of that stretch. Here the woman lies with her back to us, dark hair falling, her body filling most of the canvas, solid and real rather than a smoothed studio ideal. The next year he left Paris for Arles in the south, and the nude all but disappeared from his painting.