The Sofa

In the early 1890s Toulouse-Lautrec spent long stretches in the licensed brothels of Paris, sometimes taking a room and staying among the women for days at a time. He drew them off duty, waiting, playing cards, dozing, doing each other's hair, and in a group of these works two women rest together on a couch. That is what this is. He shows the pair without the leering or the moralising the subject usually attracted in his day, more interested in how they lean into the cushions than in any scandal. It is painted quickly on cardboard, the brown of the board left bare in places to stand for shadow. Lautrec had the run of these houses partly because the women were easy around him, a small man in poor health who was simply always there, sketching.