In this painting, Matisse has posed Henriette Darricarrère at the window of the studio, looking down at the buildings beyond the Nice promenade. Throughout his career, Matisse used models to provide inspiration for his art. He often developed close relationships with them and depended on them for extended periods of time. Their individual personalities and interests contributed greatly to the works in which they appear. In 1939, after working with live models for over 40 years, the artist described their importance to him: “My models, human figures, are never just ‘extras’ in an interior. They are the principal theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature . . . . I often keep those girls for several years, until my interest is exhausted . . . . Their forms are not always perfect, but they are always expressive. The emotional interest they inspire in me is not particularly apparent in the representation of their bodies, but often rather by the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas, or paper, and which form its orchestration, its architecture. But not everyone perceives this. It is perhaps sublimated voluptuousness, something that may not yet be decipherable to everyone.”