床

In the early 1890s Toulouse-Lautrec spent long stretches living inside the licensed brothels of Paris, the maisons closes, drawing the women who worked there during their ordinary hours off the clock. This small canvas from around 1892 shows two of them lying in bed together, heads on the pillows, one turned toward the other. There is nothing staged or salacious in it. He painted them as he might have painted friends resting, warm and unhurried, in the soft pinks and whites of the sheets. Himself made an outsider by the childhood condition that left his legs stunted, Lautrec watched these women without judgement. He returned to this pair of lovers in more than one picture, always with the same plain attention.