Alone (Elles)

In May 1896 the Paris magazine La Plume, a review of literature and art, greeted a new set of Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs as sketches of a cruelty of marvellous exactness. The set was the album Elles, and this study on cardboard was made for it. A woman has dropped backwards across a bed, still in her clothes, her red hair against the pillow and her legs in black stockings hanging over the edge. The paint is thinned and quick, with white strokes edged in blue for the sheets and skirts. Much of the yellow-brown board is left untouched. The museum's title for it is simply Alone. In the 20th century it passed through collections in Brussels and later belonged to the American-born collector Florence Gould in Cannes. Her foundation gave it to the Musée d'Orsay in 1984.