Ian Wardropper: This calm and self-contained bronze of a nude woman celebrates her ample, rounded forms. Her bowed head is buried in her folded arms. She is perhaps asleep, which may be the reason for the work's title, Night. It's by the French twentieth-century sculptor Aristide Maillol, who made female nudes, almost exclusively. He intended them to be elemental and sensuous, without any trappings of literary or symbolic meaning.

Clare Vincent, associate curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, discusses how Maillol also focuses on pure form.

Clare Vincent: I think in this case the structure of the thing comes out rather well because it's a very balanced composition. If you look at her from the back, you get one form, very solidly shown. If you look at her from the side, there is a sort of triangular shape. Again, if you come around to the front, you get another composition entirely.

Ian Wardropper: In fact, the model for this piece was Maillol’s wife, Clothilde. But he tightened and simplified what he saw, emphasizing calm and harmonious form to make his art. Maillol said: "To have a model and copy it. No doubt nature is the foundation of an artist's labor. But art does not lie in the copying of nature."