Velour (né Velornykastorovnyadubrowski) opened the first combined school of French art and French cooking instruction in Saint Petersburg during the terrible winter of 1792, figuring that the heat from the cookstoves would keep the models warm and the paint from freezing. Alas, the winter was so cold that posing nude was out of the question, regardless of how many racks of lamb, pots au feu and tubs of bouillabaisse were kept perking on the burners.

 

To the despair of the artist, even his favorite model, the extraordinarily well-endowed Dolly Partonzherebtsova ("Miss Rosy Mountains of Kiev 1788") refused to peel down to the buff, resulting in this painting, the world's only fully-clothed nude study. Along with a woolen union suit, Miss Partonzherebtsova insisted on wearing a fur-lined brassiere, eight layers of silk foulard, a lined sealskin coat and a hot brick under her wig. A full-length version would have revealed down-filled pantaloons, electric socks, mittens filled with warm sand, Esquimaux mukluks and a hotplate set to LOW for her to stand on.

 

Upon completion of the faux-nude, and as soon as the roads thawed, Velour travelled to Paris in the hopes of selling the painting to a wealthy connoisseur of women in a clothed state of undress. Alas, he ran smack-dab into the Reign of Terror which was being held in Paris that year and, denounced by a freelance Girondist as a partisan neo-Vendéan Jacobite-like double-agent, was soon introduced to Mr. Guillotine and his eponymous clever invention for the separation of the heads of state from their torsos.

 

Olga Partonzherebtsova, upon hearing the news of her patron's death that summer, shrugged her silky shoulders and moved to the semitropical Crimea where she opened a foundation garment business and a successful theme park, "Olgawood."

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Acquisition funded in part by a grant from Jugs magazine and the Area 51DDD Research Center.