Reclining nude

The nude, and more specific the female nude was, especially during the second part of his career, a constantly important, almost dominating subject in the oeuvre of Jan Sluijters. Huib Luns considers the period 1927-1941 in his Jan Sluijters Palet monography from 1941, as the era in which the artist would finally come to ultimate Beauty. A last conquest was necessary though: simplicity. After 1926 the storms in Sluijter's studio calmed down, he was more and more able to keep his emotions and his usual restlessness under control. A what is called by Luns 'classical restraint' has now become his best quality, allowing all new trendy opportunities to pass. Sluijters, as the author states, examined nature much calmer and deeper. "The elements of everlasting beauty in the human body have remained unchanged in art history from day one, and the development to the stylish "nudes" of the later Sluijters can be found in the liberation of the eternal in relation to the temporary, because of a growing frankness, with which beauty is faced in the model." (H. Luns, 'Jan Sluijters', in:Palet serie, Amsterdam 1941, p. 45-49)
Jan Sluijters painted the same model several times; a very similar composition Negerin met witte kousen (see: Jan Juffermans, Jan Sluijters, Mijdrecht 1981, p. 83) is in a Dutch private collection.

To be included in the catalogue raisonné on the artist's work, currently being prepared by the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague.