Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Comtesse de Toulouse-Lautrec
Sévadjian (sold:  Hôtel Drouot, March 22, 1920, no. 25)
Sale:  Mme. Lucy Gérard, March 1923, no 31
Sale:  Dr. Soubies (Hôtel Drouot, June 14, 1928, no. 89)
Sale:  P. Druet, Paris, 1931, 107
Defresne Collection
Private Collection, France

Between the years 1892 and 1895, Lautrec was a regular visitor to the maisons closes or brothels of the rue des Moulins, the rue d’Ambroise and the rue Joubert, observing, sketching, and often living with the prostitutes for weeks at a time.  Lautrec produced a number of paintings and prints based on his observations in the brothels, including the portfolio Elles and the present work, both executed in 1896.  Lautrec’s choice of title for his portfolio of lithographs depicting prostitutes illustrates his idiosyncratic perspective on prostitution as he did not call his portfolio Les Filles, the most common term for prostitutes at the time.  He chose instead the female pronoun Elles, which translates roughly as the female ‘they,’ which suggests that his images of prostitutes were aimed at a more general depiction of the feminine. 

There are plenty of examples of titillating depictions of prostitutes from the late 19th century, and Lautrec’s images avoided all of these stereotypical tropes.  Instead, Lautrec showed his subjects in a series of domestic tasks, dressing, grooming, bathing, cleaning, with hardly any references to their profession.  In the present work, the woman appears to be removing the loose fitting shirt worn by prostitutes during off-hours (fig. 1), a decidedly un-erotic costume.  She could also be drying herself after bathing (fig. 2).  In any case, this striking work relates directly to Lautrec’s important images of prostitutes performing everyday activities.  Lautrec depicted the pale flesh of the woman in bright strokes of white paint as the woman’s body is made to shine by the interior gaslights of the brothel, casting a pale green shadow under her arm.  While the subject is engaged in a mundane task, Lautrec’s painting hits at the woman’s profession by showing the theatrical presentation of the woman’s body. 

Lautrec, in other words, did not hide his subjects’ profession in his various depictions of prostitutes, but rather described the life of a prostitute as the typical life of a woman, a provocative statement at a time when prostitutes were viewed as almost a separate class of human being.  Many of Lautrec’s contemporaries, even his supporters, described his depictions of prostitutes as horrifying and ugly, and perhaps it was Laturec’s attempt to blur the distinction between a prostitute and a woman that horrified his viewers who could only look at images of prostitutes as images of ugliness and vice.  The present work shows not ugliness of course, but the beauty found in the intimate moments of everyday life.

Fig. 1, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Femme à la glace – La glace à main, from the Elles portfolio, 1896

Fig. 2, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Femme qui se lave – La Toilette, from the Elles portfolio, 1896