Modèle se coiffant dans l'atelier

Modèle se coiffant dans l'atelier (Model Doing Her Hair in the Studio) depicts the pre- or post-session moment when a model attends to her own hair, a motif with precedents in Degas's bather series. The studio moment — between the formal pose and the private act of grooming — interested Vuillard as a transitional condition similar to the domestic moments of dressing or threading a needle that he depicted in his intimate interiors. The model doing her hair is at once a professional in her workplace and a woman in a private moment, a duality that Vuillard records without prurience.

The studio setting is treated with greater spatial openness than Vuillard's domestic interiors, the practical working space of the atelier providing a different background texture. The figure's raised arms and turned head create a contrapposto action that Vuillard renders with his characteristic simplified form language.