Coming nearly at the end of Matisse’s long career, L’Asie culminates his obsession with painting the female figure in rich, exotic costumes and settings. In the work’s title he was perhaps alluding to a well-established tradition in European art in which female figures were used to symbolize each of the continents. Or it may have been suggested by one of his favorite costumes, a Chinese coat lined with white fur from a Siberian tiger, here rendered in violet and blue and worn over a haute-couture striped gown. While the golden ocher skin tones of the model are characteristic of Asian peoples, the model apparently came from the Congo. Moreover, her eyes are blue and green, as if reflecting the colored beads of her necklace. Matisse worked on L’Asie between his return to the hill town of Vence, in the south of France, in late November 1945, and his departure for Paris in June 1946. It was painted in his studio at the Villa Le Rêve.