Bonnard, Vuillard and Félix Vallotton belonged to the circle of Nabis painters. Among them Vallotton was “le nabi étranger”, the stranger from the Canton of Vaud, and also the outsider. After 1900 Vallotton reverted to the French classical style.

The Models at Rest, is a representative work. In it Vallotton united all his themes - portrait and nude, interior and still life, even the landscape is present. The mirror served him as medium for this, which reflects two of Vallotton’s pictures into the room: a portrait of his parents and a river landscape.

The models are taking time out to have a rest. They appear to be purely engrossed in what they are doing and are not present for the viewer. The reflection of their profiles intensifies this feeling of self-absorption –the mirror is a picture within a picture. The blue flower is in the centre of the composition and the women’s eyes are drawn to it. Like the pictorial order it is the vanishing point of the melancholy.

The bodies are exactly reproduced. With his use of line Vallotton makes deliberate reference to Ingres. In around 1800 Ingres was the most significant figural painter and the epitome of French classicism.

Vallotton turned away from the sketch-like style of Impressionism and developed his painting strictly and systematically. The American poet and collector Gertrude Stein talked about this: while he was doing her portrait she explained, he painted the canvas evenly from top to bottom as though he were winding down a curtain.