Few of his copies reveal more poignantly than this one the conflicts Cézanne often experienced in representing the nude female figure, even when frozen in art. The famous Hellenistic statue of Venus in the Louvre appears here stiff and athletic, devoid of its feminine charm and grace. The same is not true of his other copies of the same statue (Chappuis, Adrien. The Drawings of Paul Cézanne. 2 vols. Greenwich, Conn., 1973, nos. 306-10), at least not to this degree; a few even convey the sensuous beauty of the original. Cézanne himself seems to have been dissatisfied, for he crossed out the figure's face; this aggressive gesture further hints at conflict, like the cancelling of the face in another drawing of a woman (ibid., no. 942), but also in one of a man (ibid., no. 392). Theodore Reff, from Paul Cézanne: Two Sketchbooks (1989), p. 86.