R aoul Dufy was far from singular in his artistic interests: he was a man who drew from art of both past and present to inform his practice. Indeed, the present work, with its reclining nude model and classical statue, places the academic tradition of art history in conversation with the striking innovations of modern painting to which Dufy was a prominent contributor, offering a vibrant translation of the historic theme of the painter and his model into the new, pictorial language the artist had refined over his career.

Dufy’s fascination with the Fauvist tenants of vivid color, bold contours and collapsed perspective—as well as their combined potential for theatricality—was undoubtedly inspired by Henri Matisse, for whom the artist’s studio was also a favored motif and who employed an exuberant palette to render the variations of color and pattern composing the sun-drenched environment in which he worked (see fig. 1). Indeed, the older artist and his Fauve contemporaries exerted a considerable influence on the younger Dufy, who would cite Matisse’s Luxe, calme et volupté as a turning point in his own artistic development: “At the sight of this picture I understood all the new reasons for painting, and Impressionist realism lost its charm for me as I contemplated the miracle of the imagination introduced into design and color. I immediately understood the new pictorial mechanics” (Raoul Dufy, quoted in John Elderfield, The “Wild Beasts:” Fauvism and Its Affinities, New York, 1976, p. 78).

Despite the depth of Matisse’s influence, it was only after Dufy’s encounter with the proto-Cubist work of Paul Cézanne in 1909 that the now-instantly recognizable, distinctly Dufy-an aesthetic of the present work began to emerge. Known to his contemporaries as "the enchanter," Dufy found profound inspiration in the way forms and colors were transformed by light, a theme which strongly resonated with both his artistic forbearers. Yet, the technique through which Dufy explored this notion was his own. As Dora Perez-Tibi noted, in his early years, "[Dufy] had become aware of the need to recreate observed reality in terms of his own ‘reality,’ and went on to elaborate his theory of ‘couleur-lumière,’ with which he experimented, and which he would apply to his entire oeuvre" (Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, New York, 1989, pp. 23-24). Through a measured, yet almost stenographic application of rapid contours, he delineates form across vibrant swatches of pigment heightened by thinned color washes.

In 1940, due to the occupation of Paris and the progression of his polyarthritis, Dufy moved in with his physician and friend Dr. Pierre Nicolau. Immobilized by his illness, the artist turned the doctor’s drawing room into his studio and lived and worked in the doctor’s home on Rue Jeanne-d’Arc for six months. As he recovered, he took a studio on the same street which would serve as the setting for the present work.

The present work is a window into the artist’s existence during a particularly difficult time. Though hinted at by the canvas at the right of the composition, with Paris occupied by German soldiers, Dufy’s regular jaunts to England and the South of France were placed on hold, and the regattas, horse races and high society events which populate his oeuvre were necessarily replaced by more domestic subjects. Instead, the artist’s more scholastic preoccupations were brought to the fore, and by 1941, the artist’s work began to more strongly reflect his interests in the Old Masters, particularly the Venetians like Tintoretto and Titian (see fig. 2).

Nu couché dans l'atelier de la rue Jeanne-d'Arc has not been offered at auction in almost four decades, having been in several distinguished private collections before its acquisition by Sydell Miller in 1998.