Les deux Modèles depicts Dufy's favourite model Rossetti in his studio at the Impasse de Guelma in Montmartre which he had occupied since 1911. With its distinctive blue painted walls it provides the setting for a number of joyous works of 1928-1930 in which Dufy reaffirms his passion for colour and his delight in the feminine nude form. "Never has any artist loved women more than Dufy did...women inspired Dufy to quite a different level of emotional response. Dufy's paintings of nudes are indeed nudes in that they incorporate and respect most of the civilized inflexions from myth and custom that have informed the painting of the naked female for a good many centuries: the classical reclining poses, the use of ruched or fluttering drapery, the avoidance, mostly, of pubic hair, the sense of some kind of idealized beauty.

'Les deux Modèles of 1930 is a summing up of Dufy's approach to the female nude: one girl standing and the other sprawling in rest: a feeling of studio life, of work, of serious purpose, but also that pulsating undercurrent of life in a room with your clothes off, of challenge, physical ease, sensuous isolation, and alert sexuality. What touches me so much about Dufy's nudes is that they are never allowed to become, in today's jargon, mere sex objects. His models are girls, and not just models, but the atmosphere created by Dufy in all these paintings is full of an awareness of human dignity, vulnerability, and innocent grace. All this is a very great achievement." (Bryan Robertson, Raoul Dufy, exh. cat., London, 1983, p. 30)