Seated Nude

This study comes from a Paris teaching studio around 1820, where young painters spent their days working from a live model. The woman is known as Mademoiselle Rose, a professional model who sat for Delacroix several times in the studio of his teacher Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Her outstretched right arm would have rested on a prop, and Delacroix left the prop out, so the hand hangs in the dark air. The squared block she sits on and the bare brown background belong to the studio as well. The Nationalgalerie in Berlin points to her elaborate, fashionable hairstyle, which makes the head look almost like a portrait. The museum also quotes a contemporary's account of Delacroix at this age. After a day copying Rubens and Rembrandt in the Louvre, he noticed tones in a model's skin he had never seen before, finished the figure in two sittings, took it home and told his friends he could paint, as of the night before. Berlin acquired the canvas in 1986.