Nude woman sitting on a sofa

Nude Woman Sitting on a Sofa of 1903 belongs to Vuillard's occasional private studio studies of the female nude — the sofa as the same domestic object he depicted in clothed figure subjects, now providing a studio setting for a nude study that maintained the domestic context of his usual work. His studio nudes remained more private than his domestic and portrait subjects, reflecting his discomfort with the exhibiting of nude subjects that distinguished him from Bonnard. Yet the sofa's presence gives this nude a domestic rather than an academic studio character, the figure encountered within a furnished room rather than against the neutral backdrop of the traditional life class. His treatment of the nude in a domestic setting connected to Bonnard's practice while remaining more reserved — the figure observed with the same careful attention as any subject but without the sensual intimacy that Bonnard brought to his depictions of Marthe.

The nude is rendered without the sculptural idealization of academic figure painting — the figure sits with the casualness of someone in their own private space, the pose suggesting unselfconsciousness rather than studied arrangement. Vuillard's touch treats skin tones with the same varied mark-making he applies to any surface, the body being one material among the room's many materials.