A full-frontal portrait of a woman holding a vase in which the hands holding the vessel become part of its ornamentation. The hands are neither gripping nor holding the vase; like the woman as a whole, they become objects on a par with the vase itself. The woman's lower body or skirt is like a fluted column; her arms, chest, and hair are built out of cylinders, orbs, and undulating surfaces. The colours are reds, blues, and shades of grey and black. Prior to World War I Fernand Léger worked with an abstract idiom.
After he had become acquainted with the common French people while serving with the engineering troops during the war, he never again abandoned identifiable motifs, although he would construct his images while drawing on inspiration from machines and simple geometric forms. In the early 1920s Léger was keenly interested in continuing the heritage of his great classical country men such as David and Poussin in an idiom that is both static and architectural in scope, yet also objectified and anonymous; an idiom where every part of the painting is of equal significance.
