Die Toilette

A red-haired woman sits on the floor with her back to us, bare to the waist, a towel beneath her and her clothes thrown over a chair. Toulouse-Lautrec caught a private moment before or after a bath, and the picture is so loose it feels almost like a pastel.

The story behind the painting

For a long time this painting was catalogued as La Toilette and dated 1896, which is the date our collection data still gives. Recent research, however, places it several years earlier, in 1889. In 1890 Toulouse-Lautrec showed it in Brussels with Les XX, an avant-garde group, under the title Rousse, red-head, and the catalogue described a red-haired woman seated on the floor, seen from the back, nude. The furniture, which can be recognised in photographs of the time, suggests it was painted in his studio on the rue Caulaincourt in Paris, perhaps in a single session from life without any studies.

What to look for

The woman sits on a plain towel or sheet laid over a dark rug on bare floorboards. Her back, arms and head are bare, her hair is tied up, and her right thigh is visible. A swathe of plain fabric wraps her waist, and a black boot or stocking covers her lower right leg. More clothing hangs over a chair at the left. In the background stand two wicker chairs and a bathtub. Painted in oils on cardboard, 67 by 54 cm, the work uses a light palette of blues and yellowish greens, with red for the hair, thinned with turpentine so the strokes stay loose.

Meaning and intent

We do not know if she is undressing for a bath or dressing after one, and the painting does not tell us. Seen from above and from behind, she is absorbed in her own moment, unaware of being watched. The source notes the influence of Edgar Degas, whose similar scenes of women bathing were shown at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886. The model may be Carmen Gaudin, one of Toulouse-Lautrec's favourite models, though this is not certain. What matters is the quiet ordinariness of the scene, a body at rest in a plain room.

Legacy

The painting entered French public collections in 1914, when Pierre Goujon left it to the state on his death. It was first shown at the Musée du Luxembourg, then at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, and later at the Louvre. In 1983 it moved to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it can be seen today, still carrying its two names: La Toilette, from the catalogues, and Rousse, the simple title Toulouse-Lautrec himself used when he first showed it to the public.