Adolphe Borie, Untitled (Female Seated Nude)

In the 1890s, many French Impressionists turned to the subject of classical nude bathers, most notably Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Borie was frequently in Paris in the 1890s, and the generally classical approach of his Impressionism—whether in still lifes, portraits, or figurative subjects—may derive from his first encounters with Impressionism in these years. The delicate figure study in pencil likely dates to the early twentieth century. It is serene in the classicism of its pose.