Femmes nues jouant aux dames

By 1897 Felix Vallotton, a Swiss painter settled in Paris, was moving in the circle of young artists who called themselves the Nabis, who flattened their pictures into bold, decorative shapes under the influence of Gauguin and Japanese prints. This small oil on cardboard puts two nude women not in some classical bath but on the floor, absorbed in a game of draughts. There is nothing idealised about them, the bodies heavy and matter-of-fact, the colour laid down in flat patches edged as if by a printmaker, which is what Vallotton also was. He had made his name with stark black-and-white woodcuts, and that graphic, cut-out sense of shape is what he carries here into paint.