Fernand Léger (1881-1955) Nadia with Her Cat, ink on paper, 1950

Ink on paper, monogrammed ‘F.L.’ at lower right and bearing on the reverse the inventory number ‘D. 608/1’, titled ‘Nadia and Her Cat’, circa1950. A notice of inclusion for this work, referenced FL-2025-10-000599 by the Léger Committee on 15 October 2025, will be delivered to the buyer. This ink drawing will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

In avant-garde Paris, Fernand Léger found in Nadia not only a model but a privileged interlocutor, a sensitive mirror of his own artistic journey. Their relationship—shaped by intellectual complicity, aesthetic dialogue, and deep mutual attachment—nourished the painter’s work in the post-war years. At this time, Léger reintroduced the figure into his practice, not as a rupture but as the logical continuation of his earlier abstract investigations. Nadia’s presence accompanied this transition, where the discipline of construction opened itself to a renewed sense of humanity, attentive to everyday gestures, simple objects, and familiar faces.

Nadia and her Cat, or Portrait of Nadia with a Cat, emerges from this regained balance between emotion and structure. This ink on paper, stripped of excess and marked by precise economy, captures a moment of quiet closeness. The intimate subject does not serve a narrative purpose; rather, it becomes the anchor of a plastic composition in which the relationships between lines, volumes, and rhythms remain essential. For Léger, figuration never contradicted the imperatives of pure painting: it enriched them, provided that the presence of the real submitted itself to the formal logic governing the work. The face, the cat, the contours of the body thus become vectors of a visual harmony in which each element finds its rightful place.

The drawing here reflects this conviction. The firm, modulated line organizes the space with deliberate economy. The curves of the cat respond to the lines of the face; vertical and diagonal axes structure the composition without ever burdening it. Through great graphic simplicity, Léger achieves a dense presence and a quiet tenderness. This frank and warm rapport with reality was noted by Jean Cassou, who admired the way the artist approached a face, a hand, a leaf, or even a mechanical assembly with the same attentive, robust, and generous spirit. Maurice Jardot likewise observed that Léger’s drawn work was never a separate domain: it constituted an organic moment within his activity as a painter.

In this ink, that organic unity is fully evident. It is not a preparatory study but a finished work, concentrated and capable of standing on its own with autonomous strength. The model, far from being idealized, is treated with benevolent attention; the presence of the cat introduces a supple counterpoint that softens the overall construction. One senses both the personal affection of the artist and the rigour of his plastic thinking.

Nadia and her Cat thus stands as an intimate testament to the relationship between the artist and the woman who shared his creative life, while simultaneously marking a significant moment in Léger’s return to the figure after the period of abstraction. The work combines sensitivity and structure, everyday life and formal organization, in an equilibrium characteristic of the painter’s maturity.