One bunch of the nude pictures of the Szőnyi group is made up of scenes depicted in an interior setting, in which a common explanation is given for the nakedness of the figures: the women are seen before or after bathing, in the act of dressing or titivating. A few months after Szőnyi's successful debut in the Budapest Art Gallery in 1919 he displayed again two paintings in the spring exhibition of 1920. One of them, titled After Bath, is probably identical with the large nude composition now kept in the Hungarian National Gallery, a latent oil variation of which, the Composition with Nudes, can be seen in a photograph together with its preliminary study piece, and another single-figure drawn sketch of which bears the date of 1919. The female figure of decorative outline, bending ahead with an affected movement among the softly drooping folds of the draperies, i.e. the red curtain and the white towel, is lifted out from the half-dim background by a strong light. "In his earlier pictures the nudes were stout so that they could better overcome with their weighty body mass the form-breaking force of the lights and the reflections. Anyway, fragile people do not suit Szőnyi's husky personality", Ervin Ybl wrote by the end of the twenties, looking back on this period.
Szőnyi painted several pictures of similar themes and titles, but the most valued work - and the most highly priced for sale - at the exhibition held in the Ernst Museum in 1921 was his painting entitled After Bathing. "The giant figures depicted with robust power, a contrast of light and shadow fill out the space. Their uniform colour scheme of deep browns and their perception free of idealisation suggest that Rembrandt has been studied", wrote Genthon on this work. But Szőnyi's painting follows Rembrandt's art not only in style, because the entire composition is a paraphrase of a famous work of the Dutch master, the Bethsabe. In Szőnyi's picture a half-nude figure crouched on the floor is tending her 'lady' as a maid in a renaissance-like box-space divided by architectonic elements, among surrounding details that resemble still-lifes. Among the members of the previous generation Vilmos Perlrott-Csaba was the one who had painted scenes like these, and a similar situation can be seen in his painting put on show in the spring exhibition of the Budapest Art Gallery in 1917. Here a nude woman is sitting and another female figure is combing her hair. This motif reappears in one of Szőnyi's pictures of a few years later, and that work refers in its title to the theme of the Rembrandt picture that had served as an example for the After Bathing.
Although the picture itself is free of allusions to its theme, it is not uncommon in the case of some nude pictures that it is given a title borrowed from a specific biblical story. Nevertheless the title is suggestively appropriate, because the Bethsabe story is a classic example of man's peeping into the intimate sphere of woman, unnoticed. This biblical voyeur situation is applicable to the other paintings as well, as most of the nudes appearing in enclosed spaces are 'spied upon' women, and the painter depicts them as if they did not know that they are seen to others. That is why their behaviour and posture - thus Bethsabe's 'indecently' gaping thighs - are intended to imply oblivious unaffectedness, but still these pictures conceived and construed with a man's eyes are ones that speak to male viewers. Otherwise, a loose relationship between the work of art and the title given to it can be seen in the fact that a reproduction of the Bethsabe was made in the Ars Una under the title Combing or in German translation: Toilette, in 1923. Another one of Szőnyi's painted works was registered in the catalogue of the Nude Exhibition of 1925 under the title Resting, but by its nature, the composition could well be identical with the Venus displayed at the collective exhibition of 1924, or alternatively - primarily based on its motif of a maid drawing the curtains apart, as appearing in one of Rembrandt's mythological pictures - the Danae that Szőnyi put on show in the first exhibition of the New Society of Artists in 1924. The story of a woman isolated from the external world and yet helplessly subjected to man's lust, Danae, was depicted by other members of the Szőnyi group also. Patkó placed the scene in a landscape, where the woman figure awaiting the gold-rain, falling backwards is still surrounded by maids. But just contrary to this conventional iconographic style, Korb's Danae is not a mythological figure depicted with additional attributes, but instead a common female nude figure bathing in the sunshine. Anyway, these pictures lack any too direct elements of classic iconography or those elements that are incompatible with contemporary reality, as the position of spying King David is taken by the viewer, and Zeus descending on earth miraculously is replaced by the golden rays of the sun.
"The Szőnyi kind of robust types and heavy-built nudes appear in the pictures of the youths gathering around him", wrote Ervin Ybl on Szőnyi's influence on the compositions of his contemporaries. Patkó's large painting is a representation of the many times varied bathing theme; the female nudes shining up or flashing forth from the dark radiate peace and strength. However only the three woman figures with their heads turned and the hangings are visible in the semi-dark interior, they are not surrounded by the series of objects as in the paintings of Szőnyi, who consequently places his figures in some sort of a narrative framework most of the time. In Patkó's art the place is a completely neutral studio milieu, the nudes drying themselves with towels in the light pouring in from the side and casting heavy shadows, appear also frequently in Károly Patkó's drawings of this time, and the light-shadow play of the light that touches and feels the round forms almost bruising them is more pronouncedly present in the two-figure etching variation of this composition.
Aba-Novák's bathing-drying female figures, such as the two-figure Nudes are closely related to Patkó's monumental nudes, but his gradually expanding compositions display more and more figures and props. Thus his compositions become much more realistic than Szőnyi's or Patkó's pictures, as they preserve the stage-setting of the studio situation and its artificial nature. In the picture entitled Female Nudes made in 1921 the accidental totality of the figures - the same sitter duplicated - the red drapes, the covered table and the sheet of paper pinned onto the wall is integrated by something else than the external frame, a story or title. Aba-Novák focuses on "evoking the feeling of touching" and explores the "heavy forms observable in the peaceful lighting, and their relationships". Although the plasticity of the masses is the most eye-catching feature of the confidently composed picture, the stout forms begin to be loosened up by the light and still hidden complementary reflex colours are vibrating in the low key setting.
Contrary to the nudes struggling with draperies or freezing into statue-like postures the motif of bathing remains naturally realistic in Aba-Novák's art. The artist identified the person sitting for the picture in the title: Eta Washing Herself. The figure of dr. Eta Nagy appears in another nude picture that shows a woman combing her hair, and in both paintings, stout-bodied figures can be seen placed in the earlier, almost monochrome dark interior. Some artists belonging to the group of 'small masters' among all the followers of Aba-Novák's group also produced compositions of this kind, for which Lajos Tihanyi János' tint-drawing of a woman washing herself can be cited as an example.
Combing the hair is the theme of one of Szőnyi's works, a reproduction of which was published in Ernő Kállai's book New Hungarian Painting 1900-1925. In addition to his painting entitled Woman Combing Her Hair that was put on show in an exhibition in the Ernst Museum in 1921, another half-nude was also put on display. In this latter piece titled Girl with Apples again a collection of objects in a still-life arrangement is used to complement the female figure, and the bowls or baskets full of round-shaped fruits, the symbols of fecundity, go well with the nudes. The same nude poser here depicted in blue skirt and white kerchief reappears in the picture entitled After Bathing, and in 1924 both works found their way to the Biennale of Venice as part of the collection of Szőnyi's works. The colour scheme of Szőnyi's early paintings is still reserved, but the critic Artúr Elek already had a presentiment for Szony's later abundance of colours as early as at the exhibition of 1921: "A not yet unfolded multitude of grades is still hiding in these colours."
Another preferred explanatory note or pretext for nude compositions is titivation, and the type of female figure viewing herself in the mirror has a long tradition in the history of arts. Just like combing and body care, the 'toilette' in front of the mirror is a typical activity conventionally linked to the feminine role. In Patkó's picture the half-nude glancing into the mirror is surrounded by maids, just like in the bathing scenes. The enclosed, dark space of the previous pictures here opens up wide and the sky becomes visible through the window behind the drawn-apart curtain, while in the works of other artists, such as the version of the same compositional pattern rendered by Lajos Fonó - a follower of Aba-Novák and Patkó - one can look onto a painted landscape background.
The female nude figure surrounded by maids leads us on to another traditional type of visual rendering. The nude figure lying in front of a landscape background may be complemented with various other figures, following the renaissance examples. Paizs Goebel participated in the spring exhibition of the Budapest Art Gallery in 1924 with his picture entitled Venus. It is very probable that this piece is identical with the painting titled Painter and Model, in which the artist hid himself in the role of the servant holding the fruit-dish. The India ink sketch of this picture was made in the etching generation's style, but the painting itself, although it testifies to the inspiration of Szőnyi's group in respect of the choice of its theme and its composition, is much more strongly linked to the academic traditions with its naturalistic painting style. The Szőnyi group's art served as an example to follow for the younger generations, even as represented by Paizs Goebel. Béla Kontuly replaces the roles in one of his early and hidden compositions: a dressed-up female figure accompanies the young male nude in the picture, the specific theme of which cannot be determined more closely.
Several renaissance-inspired Venus depictions can be found among the works of the young generation, and the variegated collection ranges from Dávid Jándi's robust nude reminiscent of Michelangelo's art to Pál Molnár-C's Sleeping Venus rendered in the style of the art deco.
Vince Korda, who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1918 to 1919 painted his double nude piece in Nagybánya in 1923, shortly before he would leave Hungary for good. This picture reflects Szőnyi's influence in many ways, as Korda - similarly to other younger painter students - adopted the technique of "reconciling the bodies with space filled with light and the local colours with the reflections". The warmly radiating brownish tones, the counter-light pouring in through the window opening onto a landscape background and the still-life part visible in the foreground are all pictorial gimmicks that regularly recur as one of the set of artistic tools of the painters of the Szőnyi group. Nevertheless, no connotation whatsoever accompanies Korda's reposing nudes, the same way as in one of Szőnyi's etchings.
The bathing scenes do not remain within the closed room interiors, as the nudes do step outside into nature. In Aba-Novák's large painting executed in two variations he varies the body postures tested in drawings and single-figure studio scenes, in order to weave the undressed female figures into an independent composition in the narrow strip of the foreground. In the background the undifferentiated mass of people familiar from India ink drawings is undulating, but the deep-blue sky hovering over the figures bathing in the stream is not a real landscape of bright sunshine. However the light context that got changed as a result of natural lighting is much more palpable in the drawings of similar themes.