The subject is attempted rape. There is no mistaking the intention of the thickset satyr with abnormally large hands lunging toward the limp naked nymph huddled at his feet with her back turned and her arms flung out in an arabesque of flight or supplication. Art historians have identified her as Matisse's Russian pupil Olga Meerson, largely on the evidence of her red hair (which struck me initially as odd, since no one has suggested that Meerson had red eyes, like the nymph in the picture, or that Matisse, who was also a redhead, had black hair, like his satyr). Given the personalities involved, and the circumstances under which this picture turned out to have been painted, I find it inconceivable that Meerson actually posed for Nymph and Satyr (which is not to say, of course, that she wasn't its virtual model). But something complicated is certainly going on here, something that shows what Matisse meant when he said that a painting or drawing, unlike a photograph, enables the artist to draw on emotions and insights over which he has no conscious control. "They synthesize and contain many things the painter himself could not initially have suspected," he wrote of his portraits.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18171