This seated nude alludes to two opposing tendencies within Moore’s work at this time. In some ways it evokes the European tradition in its representation of a female figure in a moment of self-contemplation, seated on a chair and gazing into a hand-mirror. Her downturned eyes and slight tilt of the head are a subtle yet powerful suggestion of an inner life. The pose is animated by the implied gesture of hand moving through hair. The soft fullness of the sitter’s flesh is rendered with delicate areas of watercolour wash, accentuated in places by bold outlines and shading in different media. 
  

However, the work also pulls in another direction. The hand-mirror sits loosely in an immense rock-like fist. The massive arm raised tenderly to the sitter’s hair casts her face into shadow. Unlike the softly rounded breasts and torso, the thighs, monumental in their proportions, are flattened like blocks of stone.  Although ostensibly seated, the figure appears to be lifted upon these giant columns. The three-quarter composition terminates the legs at their widest point, further highlighting their monumentality. The block-like strength of the figure echoes the qualities of Mexican sculpture which Moore admired, its ‘largeness of scale’ and ‘real stoniness’, as he described it, sharing the ‘character of mountains, of boulders, rocks & sea worn pebbles.’

In this drawing we see Moore exploring the tension between the European tradition in Western art and radical alternatives he perceived in non-Western and prehistoric art. In this, Moore was not alone. Pablo Picasso similarly experimented with more traditional themes and styles of Western art during his neoclassical period, sometimes twisting and distorting his figures in unexpected ways that sit uncomfortably with the aesthetic traditions they evoke....Sylvia Cox 2019