The Blonde Model

In the mid-1920s Derain was looking hard at older French painting, and for this seated nude from 1924 the museum names his sources directly. They are the 18th-century nudes of François Boucher and Fragonard, and the bathers of Renoir. The young woman fills almost the whole canvas, her body turned at three-quarters and gathered into a rounded oval by dark, curving contours. She rests her head in her hand, and a white cloth covers her legs. Behind her the background is nearly as pale as her skin, with a faint green tint. Derain's dealer, Paul Guillaume, owned several nudes of this same model in almost the same pose. When it was reproduced in 1928, already in his collection, it carried a plainer title, Nude with Drapery.