Model Seated in a Chair, Combing Her Hair

Model Seated in a Chair, Combing Her Hair of 1903 is a studio subject combining two of his recurring private concerns — the studio model and the intimate grooming gesture — within a domestic interior rather than a formal studio setting. The model combing her hair existed at the intersection of the professional studio relationship and the intimate domestic subject: a woman in the process of self-arrangement, her attention directed toward her own hair rather than toward the painter or the viewer, creating the quality of unobserved private activity he consistently sought. His treatment placed the model within a specific spatial and chromatic environment rather than against a neutral studio backdrop, maintaining the domesticity of his subjects even in work that involved a professional studio relationship. The 1903 date places this in his mature middle period, when his studio practice had evolved from the extreme Nabi flatness of the early 1890s toward a more atmospheric but still distinctively personal approach.

The seated figure fills the picture's intimate format, the hair-combing gesture creating a characteristic triangular composition with the raised arms. Vuillard's oil handling describes the model's form through warm flesh tones that dissolve into the surrounding chair and interior, consistent with his integration of figure and setting even in formal figure studies.