The Two Girl Friends

For about three years in the early 1890s, Toulouse-Lautrec spent long stretches living inside the licensed brothels of Paris, where the women grew used to him and let him watch them off duty. He painted them resting, dressing, playing cards, and here two of them lying close together on a bed. He called such pairs simply the friends, the polite word of the day for the couples some of the women formed among themselves. It is done quickly in thinned oil on cardboard, the faces barely modelled, the mood tired and tender rather than staged. Lautrec was gathering scenes like this toward a large picture of the main room of the house on the Rue des Moulins. He was about 30, and had fewer than six years left to live.