Nude woman sitting on a sofa

Nude woman sitting on a sofa from around 1903 represents an unusual subject for Vuillard, whose domestic interiors rarely included the nude. His Nabi colleagues Bonnard and Denis were more frequent painters of the female nude, but Vuillard's intimist approach to interior space occasionally included unclothed figures encountered within the domestic environment rather than posed in a studio. This unstudied, informal quality — a nude as a feature of domestic life rather than a formal artistic subject — is consistent with the intimist program's commitment to unmonitored private life.

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.