This gouache is an early study for Etude pour La femme et l'enfant, 1922, an oil painting which is in turn one of three preliminary but finished essays for La femme et l'enfant, painted in the same year (Bauquier, no. 331; coll. Kunstmuseum, Basel). In the present work the still-life and landscape seen behind the reclining female figure have assumed their basic position in the composition, although the child is absent. In later versions Léger refined the decorative panel on the right side and introduced a chest of drawers and a window in place of the screen with a circular design on the left.