Semi-nude woman sitting.

Władysław Ślewiński was a Polish painter who spent much of his career in Brittany, working in the Post-Aven circle associated with Paul Gauguin, whose influence on his style was decisive. Semi-nude woman sitting from 1902, preserved in museum storage, belongs to the figure studies that formed a continuous strand of his Breton work — the female figure treated with the flat, simplified forms and non-naturalistic colour of the Synthétist approach Gauguin had developed at Pont-Aven. Ślewiński's nudes maintain a quiet formal dignity even as they depart from academic conventions of idealisation, the influence of Gauguin visible in their simplified silhouettes and decorative colour organisation.

Ślewiński's Synthétist training shows in the simplified, outline-defined forms of the figure and the non-descriptive, decorative treatment of background areas. The colour relationships are organised for aesthetic harmony rather than naturalistic description, with warm skin tones placed against cool or contrasting background areas in deliberate chromatic opposition.