The last in the series of three lithographs of large nudes is the most refined. Art historian John Elderfield has said: By the mid 1920s, Matisse was using lithography to create an extraordinarily wide range of soft, closely graded tones—ranging from transparent, aerated grays to dense and sooty blacks—that appear to adhere to the surface of the sheet, and to release especially subtle effects of light from the luminous whiteness of the paper. What is more, the volumes thus created stayed “light” in feeling despite their solidity, and it was this “light” disembodied sense of volume that he sought in his contemporaneous paintings, too.