In a 1931 interview, Matisse pointed to works like this first preparatory study for The "Yellow Dress" to explain the interconnectedness of painting and drawing: “You see these detailed, almost painfully shaded black and white drawings? Homework, which I still assign myself even now. They have a particular meaning in my work. They precede, accompany, and follow my paintings—by the dozens. Yet they have no clear-cut relation to the paintings themselves, because when I’m drawing I never think about the painting, which is really the indirect motive. I usually do the drawings in the evening, when it’s too dark to paint. What I’m after in them is the effect of light and shadow, deliberately leaving color aside.”