Femme se déshabillant

Femme se déshabillant (Woman Undressing) at the Winterthur Museum, painted in 1901, belongs to the occasional studio studies of the female figure that Vuillard maintained as private works outside the domestic and portrait subjects of his public career. Unlike Degas's extensive series of women bathing, dressing, and undressing — which pursued the subject with systematic professional detachment — or Bonnard's intimate observations of Marthe at her toilette, Vuillard's treatment of undressing was occasional and relatively private, suggesting studio exercises rather than sustained investigation. His discomfort with the nude as an exhibited genre was distinct from his ease with the clothed domestic figure, and these private studies serve as useful contrasts to his public work: the figure encountered as a body rather than as a social presence within a domestic environment, the surrounding space reduced to a neutral background rather than the pattern-rich interior that normally defined his subjects.

The figure is depicted in a private space with minimal studio setting. Vuillard applies paint with a direct, relatively unfinished touch appropriate to a private study rather than an exhibited work. The tonal contrast between the pale figure and the darker background is more pronounced than in his patterned domestic interiors.