George Wesley Bellows never traveled to Europe, but because of print publications and exhibitions in America featuring European art, he would have seen sixteenth-century Italian painter Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, upon which Two Women is based. The finely dressed woman represents material goods, while the unclothed woman represents pure love. At this time, Sigmund Freud’s theories about sexual desire and repression, and expectations of women to be both pure and seductive, were much discussed.