Through the mastery of the line, this simple nude study done at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at the age of 21 shows the artist’s definite gifts and confirms her early interest in the anatomical representation of the body and the female body in particular.

Beyond a charcoal rendering of volumes and proportions, Germaine Lacaze has captured the stillness of the young model.

The artist has always been pleased to evoke her long years of artistic training just after she obtained her brevet supérieur at the age of 15. First of all, her four years from 1924 to 1927 at the Beaux-Arts preparatory course, then the following four years from 1927 to 1931 as a student in the studio of Lucien Simon.

Having been admitted first in 1927 and having won several prizes during her schooling, she felt equal to the fellow male painters of her generation, such as Yves Brayer, Lucien Fontanarosa, Robert Humblot and Georges Rohner.