Woman seated in a Garden

In 1891 Toulouse-Lautrec's first poster went up on the walls of Paris, advertising the Moulin Rouge dance hall with the dancer La Goulue at its centre. The same year he sat this young woman out of doors among the trees and painted her in oil on a piece of board. She is identified as Gabrielle, a dancer who also worked as a model. Nothing here belongs to the night. She wears a plain white blouse buttoned right up to the neck under a dark jacket, and she turns her face away in strict profile, her thoughts somewhere else. The loose, broken strokes of the leaves come from the Impressionists. The firm coloured line running round her hair and her profile is closer to the poster work, the outline and flat pattern he was using that same year to make a figure read at a glance.