Two Friends

Lautrec was 30 in 1895, and he was spending long stretches inside the licensed brothels of Paris, the house on the rue des Moulins among them, where the women let him sit and work while they waited. He painted this on cardboard, with oil thinned right down with turpentine so that it soaked in and dried flat, closer to drawing than to painting. He used the method constantly because it was quick. The picture shows two women on a bed, one in pink underclothes looking back over her shoulder, the other half hidden behind her. He signed and dated it in the lower left corner. Dresden bought it in 1925 from a Berlin dealer, 24 years after Lautrec had died at 36.