Painted circa 1926, during a period of heightened artistic inspiration after Marie Laurencin had divorced her husband, the Baron Otto von Waëtjen, and returned to Paris, Femme aux seins nus is a striking portrait demonstrative of the artist’s adept handling of her medium and expressive application of colour. Here, Laurencin’s characteristic pastel tones are offset by an almost velvety application of grey. Grey had played a significant role in Laurencin’s palette since the 1910s. In these juxtaposing colours, Laurencin plays with light and shadow, bringing the sitter into sharp focus, as the paleness of her form almost glows in its translucence. Laurencin’s considered application of colour, however, demonstrates the artist’s early involvement with both Cubism and Fauvism. Loose brushstrokes delineate fragmented segments of vibrant colour that speak to the artist’s early years working with Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Derain. Femme aux seins nus is an arresting portrait indicative of Laurencin’s richly artistic milieu and newfound painterly vocabulary.

Laurencin painted many high profile socialites living in Paris in the twentieth century, some of which have included Coco Chanel and Juliette Lacaze, both portraits can be found in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Although the sitter in the present work is unknown, most probably an artist’s model, she is replete with character. The fashionable hair piece and striped clothing are reminiscent of the outfits worn at balls by the Parisian upper echelons, and yet her naked chest and frontal pose set the present work apart. No matter whose portrait Laurencin captured, the work remained authentically in her style. It is in the present work, however, that Laurencin’s personality appears to shine through particularly powerfully. With enlarged eyes downcast, and lips turned slightly upwards, the woman adopts what appears to be a demure expression. The semi-nudity of the figure, however, demonstrates Laurencin’s reconceptualizing of the female nude in the artistic canon. The sitter’s confident stance and state of partial undress recalls Laurencin’s striking Amazon warrior of 1923, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (fig. 2). The women in Laurencin’s portraits are never the Odalisques of Ingres. In 1917 Laurencin wrote a poem titled Le Calmant in which the closing lines read as follows: ‘Plus que morte / Oubliée (More than dead / Forgotten).’ It is this fear of being forgotten that Laurencin’s paintings rail against. In her anonymity, the sitter in Femme aux seins nus, invites the viewer’s gaze. Laurencin subtly subverts the traditional iconography of female portraiture to her own advantage to create a world in which women sit at the heart of her creative inspiration.