Woman nude
Ca. 1885. Oil on panel.On display elsewhere
It seems that Jiménez Aranda has painted from life the scene in this small panel, the model for which physically resembles the one in his A Slave for Sale (P006450). The woman shields herself from the artist’s gaze in a pose far from Academy conventions. She is set in the sumptuous interior of an atelier, hiding her face with her hands and her bosom with her arms in a last-ditch attempt to resist showing her body.
The tension in the work – between the vulnerability of the naked body exposed to the eyes of the artist and the public and the dramatic mood conveyed by the model’s body language – is in contrast to the solution offered ten years later by Rafael de la Torre in his The Struggle to Live (P006634), which was awarded a third-place medal at the 1895 National Exhibition for a work with the same theme.
G. Navarro, Carlos, Invitadas. Fragmentos sobre mujeres, ideología y artes plásticas en España (1833-1931), Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2020, p.193 nº 34