Kisling's incredibly sensual nudes reflect the painter's love of the female form. In 1937, Louis Chéronnet wrote of the artist's exhibition at the Gertrude Stein Gallery: "Kisling is a sensual materialist with a taste for the sumptuous who focuses carefully on technique... What voluptuous lines and colors! All of Kisling's forms are characteristically elongated and graceful as a dancer in an arabesque. And over a seemingly inalterably prepared canvas colors spread, raw, shimmering, and unctuous" (quoted in Jean Kisling, op. cit., p. 43).

Kisling asserted that no artist past or present influenced his artistic style, but one cannot deny the similarities of the present work to the celebrated nudes painted by his close friend, Amedeo Modigliani (see fig. 1). Kisling met Modigliani shortly after moving to Paris from Poland in 1910, quickly becoming a key figure in the École de Paris and dubbed the “Prince of Montparnasse” by his cohorts.

The delicate shading and intense gaze of the sitter reflect the sensitivity to form, feeling and pictorial essence that only Kisling could achieve. Her almond-shaped eyes—a trademark of Kisling’s portraiture as well as Modigliani's—and the energy of color reflect the enthusiasm that these subjects inspired in him. As the artist once stated, “A beautiful girl in the nude fills me with joy, the desire to love, to be happy, and I would make the piece of cloth, the backdrop on which she poses, an expression of my delight” (quoted in ibid., p. 37).

Fig. 1 Amedeo Modigliani, Nu couché, circa 1920, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York