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