L'atelier de Vence

'After the war, in 1945, Dufy stayed in Vence, where he returned to the theme of the nude and the studio. His model, with a more slender and elegant torso than the models of the thirties, is portrayed with an extended brushstroke that is characteristic of Dufy's style in this period. This treatment is as free as the painting of the landscape seen through the large bay window beside which the model is posing. It presents a view of the town of Vence, with its recognisable terraced hills of olive trees and their surrounding walls. This landscape, which is framed in the rectangle of the window, is flush with the pictorial plane and can be understood either as a real view or as the painted image of a landscape, a 'painting within a painting', like the works hanging on the walls which form a part of the composition' (D. Perez-Tibi, Dufy, London, 1989, pp. 246-247).