Carmen

Lautrec was 19 or 20 and still working in Fernand Cormon's studio when he painted the woman the Clark simply calls Carmen. Carmen Gaudin earned her living as a laundress in Montmartre. His friend the painter François Gauzi told the story afterwards of Lautrec catching sight of her in the street, struck by the red hair, and asking her to sit for him. She did, on and off over several years, in at least 13 pictures. Here there is no cabaret and no lettering. She stands against a plain ground, turned square to the viewer, and the hair is the brightest thing in the canvas. The Clark dates it about 1884, five years before the Moulin Rouge opened.