The primary subjects both of the Musée d’Orsay’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-63) and Olympia (1863) look out at the viewer - in a sense - as equals, forestalling one-sided invasion. This female nude has a certain modest and intimate character, which gives it some emotional contention in counterpoint. Picasso’s Blue period is characterized by profound images of melancholy that explore the human condition and helped to cement his position at the forefront of the avant-garde.

not only asserted the possessiveness of the (European male) viewer’s gaze, but of men over women generally. By the time he died in 1973 he had produced a substantial body of original etchings, lithographs and linocuts, which rank with the greatest prints of the 20th Century. He became involved in the Intimist movement, along with Ernest Laurent, Charles Cottet, Henri le Sidaner and René Ménard, whose pastels presaged the Classicism of the 1930s. At the age of 45 and unhappily married, the artist fell for the 17-year-old Walter when he noticed her through the window of Galeries Lafayette in Paris in 1927.div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22title_and_year%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_title%22%3EFemme%20Nue%20Assise%20%3C/span%3E%2C%20%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_year%22%3E1903%20%3C/span%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22medium%22%3Epen%20and%20ink%20on%20paper%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22dimensions%22%3E33. Evelyn Sharp, New York, by whom acquired from the above on 27 September 1965; her sale, Sotheby's, New York, 12 November 1997, lot 18. This painting differs from Renoir’s nudes celebrating the beauty of the female body in harmony with Nature, as it is one of the few examples in the painter’s oeuvre of a nude in an indoor setting. Gone are the rotund, somewhat lifeless nudes of Picasso’s Neo-Classicism, and the fractured, inflated multi-partite surrealist visions of the late 1920s, and in their place a sensuous lyricism and eroticism the likes of which had not been seen in twentieth-century art up to this point.

This piece has an auction history of 10 total sales since its initial entry to the market in November 2017.

Inspired by African and Iberian art, he also contributed to the rise of Surrealism and Expressionism.