Morton Schamberg was a proponent of the revolutionary artistic movement taking hold in
Europe in the early 1900s, and was actively involved in the introduction of cubism to
America. Following study in architecture and painting at the University of Pennsylvania and
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Schamberg first traveled to Paris in 1906 where
he was exposed to the dynamic compositional development of cubism and the bold color
palette of the Fauves and the Synchromists. Schamberg's work became increasingly
abstract over the years following his return to Philadelphia as he embraced the structural
influence and broken planes of cubism, which found a natural foundation in his architectural
background.

The delineated shapes that come together to form the figure in Seated Nude demonstrate
Schamberg's development toward fully realized abstraction. Here he is beginning to dissolve
the subject into geometric forms defined only by areas of expressive color. William C. Agee
writes, "Schamberg endowed his color at once with a material, almost palpable richness and
substance, his skill in hue selection and application must rank him as a major American
colorist by 1912. ...Indeed, so distinctive are these hues that they can be identified by this
time as his hallmark. These colors were subjected to a process of working and reworking
that built up a particularly rich, painterly surface" (Morton Livingston Schamberg, Salander-
O'Reilly Galleries, New York, 1982, p. 6).

Seated Nude can be dated circa 1911 based on its similarity to the following description of a
Schamberg from the collection of John Quinn in a 1927 auction catalogue: "An ultra-modern
conception of an undraped seated girl, in luminous colors" (American Art Association, New
York, Paintings and Sculptures: The Renowned Collection of Modern and Ultra-Modern Art
formed by the Late John Quinn, February 11, 1927, lot 448). The nude from Mr. Quinn's
collection was dated 1911, which leads us to assign the same date to the present painting.
The use of the term "ultra-modern" highlights just how progressive this style was
considered at the time. Schamberg exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913 and organized the
first exhibition of modern art in Philadelphia at McClees Gallery in 1915. Two years before
his untimely death during the flu epidemic of 1918, he turned in an entirely different
direction, drawing highly detailed Precisionist images of machine forms.