Selbstbildnis vor dem Spiegel

This is one of the few times Toulouse-Lautrec turned the mirror on himself, and he did it young, around 1882, when he was seventeen or eighteen and still a student, years before the Montmartre dance halls made his name. He painted it quickly on a piece of cardboard rather than canvas, catching a corner of his own bedroom with a candlestick and a clutter of objects on the table that he did not bother to tidy. The mirror frames him from the chest up. A childhood bone condition had left his legs short, and here the table and the picture's lower edge simply close off everything below it. He looks straight out, neat and composed, a young man sizing himself up.