Female Nude, bust 

Raoul Dufy made this drawing of a female nude bust with pen and ink, on paper. The fluid strokes and cross-hatching give a sense of the model's volume. Dufy's work is interesting because, on the one hand, his chosen medium is extremely traditional. Yet, on the other hand, the marks are rendered with a kind of casual facility. Dufy clearly wanted to capture the essence of the pose quickly. The artist made this drawing in 1936, at a time when the dominant styles were trending toward greater degrees of abstraction. And yet, Dufy did not fully participate in that turn. He was interested in the sensuous qualities of the world and, in particular, the ease with which modern life made beauty available for consumption. Dufy's technique—simple and gestural—matches this desire for a direct experience, which he renders for us with every stroke of the pen.