Femme se coiffant. Celle qui se peigne

In the spring of 1892 this small picture hung at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, the yearly exhibition with no jury and no prizes, open to any artist who paid the fee. Toulouse-Lautrec entered it in the catalogue under a title that gives almost nothing away, Celle qui se peigne, the one who combs her hair. There is no name and no story. A woman in a loose pink gown sits among white linen with both arms raised, her fingers deep in long yellow hair that falls forward and hides her face completely. The room behind her breaks up into streaks of green and ochre. It is oil on cardboard, just 44 centimetres high, signed in the upper left corner. Two Paris galleries showed it again in 1914, and it entered the national collections by bequest in 1937.