Aristide Maillol

Aristide Maillol’s primary subject throughout his career was the idealized female body. He worked with a succession of handsome young models to create large bronze sculptures of single nude women in states of repose. This woodcut dates from an early point in his career, when he used his wife Clotilde as his first nude model. This depiction of a young woman engulfed by a stylized wave of water reflects an unusual blending of the Western artistic tradition of working from the nude with an Eastern theme likely borrowed from Japanese prints.