Seated Female Nude 1870 - 1923

Curator: "Seated Female Nude" by Willem Witsen. Created somewhere between 1870 and 1923, and housed right here at the Rijksmuseum. A work in charcoal… Editor: There's a softness, isn't there? Like she’s emerging from a dream, wrapped in this otherworldly light. It's almost melancholic. Curator: Absolutely. Think about the time this piece was created, straddling late 19th-century impressionism and the early rumblings of modernism. Witsen was working in a moment where traditional academic expectations around the nude subject were being actively challenged. This wasn’t about idealizing the female form; it was an attempt at a real portrayal. Editor: And that covering...is it a shawl? It feels like armor. She is seated; head bowed almost. She is reserved. Not at all how women have been painted through time... Curator: Exactly. Instead of overt sexuality, we get a palpable sense of interiority. A powerful thing to express during an era of increasingly progressive social and political movements surrounding gender, but also a time where those very movements were violently contested. This piece invites viewers to connect with its subject on a more human level—the kind that recognizes the complex tapestry of emotions and experience that defined womanhood then as it does today. Editor: There’s a quiet dignity, despite the vulnerability of the subject, but one is drawn to that sense of dignity above all else. So interesting...like gazing at a memory, both intensely personal and somehow universally relatable. Curator: I think you’ve articulated it beautifully. Witsen’s drawing invites us into a conversation—with the past, with each other, and with ourselves—about what it means to see, to represent, and to truly understand the female figure beyond the often limiting lens of societal expectations. Editor: It lingers with me. Much more than a simple nude portrait, there's this quiet power about this "Seated Female Nude"...food for the soul, isn't it?