El aseo

Around this time, in the mid-1890s, Toulouse-Lautrec published a set of prints he called Elles, meaning simply them, the women. It was a series about the daily life of the Paris brothels where he spent much of his time, not the theatrical side but the ordinary hours of washing, resting, doing one's hair. This painting belongs to the same world of looking. A red-haired model sits on the floor with her back to us, stripped to the waist, either just before or just after a bath. Lautrec painted redheads all his life, and he titled this one plainly, Rousse, the redhead. He had learned from Degas how to show a woman as if glimpsed through a keyhole, unposed and unaware, caught in the middle of an unremarkable moment.