The painting marks a decisive moment within Vallotton’s artistic development. The Lausanne-born artist had been associated with the Nabis since the early 1890s, joining a circle of young painters around Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. The Nabis rejected Naturalism and academic painting. They no longer regarded the picture as a window onto the world, but as an autonomous arrangement of colour, surface and line. Yet Vallotton always remained something of an outsider among the group – the ‘Nabi étranger’. His works possess a cool clarity that already anticipates Neue Sachlichkeit and Surrealism.

This becomes particularly evident in his interiors and nudes. Vallotton observes people with literary precision. His paintings speak of distance, intimacy and the subtle tensions of modern life. ‘Femme nue couchée de dos’ likewise possesses this peculiar ambivalence. The scene appears intimate, yet at the same time remains strangely cordoned off. The viewer sees the body, but is denied access to the person. It is precisely here that the painting’s modernity resides. Vallotton refuses all sentimental accoutrements, replacing them instead with a precise choreography of surface and gaze.

Today, Vallotton appears as a key figure between two centuries. His works unite the decorative elegance of the ‘fin de siècle’ with a psychological sobriety that reaches far into the 20th century. The painting offered in our auction is not merely a nude, but also a study of perception, distance and the quiet drama of seeing.