Malborough Fine Art, London, 1972
Victor Lownes, Hertfordshire
Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Allen Jones: New Paintings and Sculpture, September 1972, cat. no.13, illustrated in the catalogue;
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Body and Soul, 23 October 1975 - 4 Januar🏅y 1976, cat. no.110. 

Marco Livingstone, Allen Jones: Sheer Magic, Congreve Publishing Company, New York, 1979, pp.36-37, illustrated. 

The canvas is unlined and is in good overall condition. There are a few areas of craquelure: in the upper right quadrant, in the lower right quadrant and in the lower left quadrant. There is what appears to be a very light stain on the green leg in the upper right quadrant. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals a small line of fluorescence which coincides with the stain on the green leg. This may be retouching. Held in a simple silver coloured frame.
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'Lift up your hearts my brethren,
higher and higher!
Neither forget your legs!
Lift up your legs also ye good dancers
and better yet if ye can stand upon
your head!
(F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the higher man', section 18).

Jones has been influenced by the writings of Nietzche since the 1960s and in particular by Zarathustra's use of dancing as a metaphor for celebrating the senses. Executed in 1972, the present work revels in the dynamic energy of dancing and highlights the artist's on-going fascination with the female leg. Jones first focused on the subject in highly sensual works such as Wet Seal (1965,&💮nbsp;Tate Collection, London) which depicts a pair of curvaceous female legs clad in tight PVC balanced on vertiginous stilletto heels.

In Understudy, the artist takes his position at the centre of the action underlining his long term investigation of the relationship between artist and muse, between male and female.  His choice of bold, saturated colour also reflects Kandinsky's view that such colours are suggestive of 'joy and plenty' (Kandinsky, quoted in Marco Livingstone, Allen Jones Retrospective of Paintings, exh.cat., Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, March - April 1979, unpaginated).  The particula🃏r emphasis on dancers's legs anticipates Jones's commission from the National Portrait Gallery in 1994 to paint the portrait of the most famous British balleriꩵna of the late 20th Century, Darcey Bussell (National Portrait Gallery, London).