(Albi 1864–1901 Malrose) Nu dans l’atelier, circa 1890, oil on canvas, 80.5 x 60 cm, framed, (PP)

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris. (written confirmation dated 19 July 2012 available)

This work will be included in the Supplément du Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by M. G. Dortu, now Comité Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris.

Provenance:
Private Ownership, Europe

Toulouse-Lautrec’s naturalistic scenes of Parisian nightlife mirror the image of a legendary period – the Belle Époche. Yet he was first and foremost a portraitist: the individual, not the crowd, was in the focus of his attention.
Although Toulouse-Lautrec relied on Pissarro in terms of the treatment of line and on Renoir in terms of the handling of colour, his true artistic model was Degas. In this respect, the artist closely adhered to people and to his experienced environment, with dancers and milliners as seen in the streets day by day. However, Toulouse-Lautrec’s nude drawings considerably differ from those by Degas and other Impressionists in their interpretation: the female nude as such is only a marginal phenomenon in Toulouse-Lautrec’s oeuvre, whereas the woman and her expression and background stories constitute the central subject of his interest. In this way, Toulouse-Lautrec created enviably feminine nudes representing a timid human image in their unprotected exposure.
Throughout his lifetime, Toulouse-Lautrec suffered from physical illnesses, which endowed the artist with a high regard for man’s imperfections. Therefore he always approached his models with respect and recognition. In his works he bowed to the human existence, with all its worries, trials, and abysses. His portraits, primarily his nude drawings, do not present the models in seductive glamour, but in their everyday life.
The present oil painting shows an upright standing female nude in profile to the left. The model supports herself on an easel and makes a contemplative impression as she is staring into the void. The sensitive depiction of this woman inevitably captivates the spectator.
At first sight, she seems to mainly address the depraved side of life, as do many of his nude drawings; but when taking a closer look, one realizes that it is the dignity of existence in the face of modernity that dominates the woman’s expression.
In Toulouse-Lautrec’s art, the setting the nude is placed in – in this case an interior – is just as important as the female figure itself and is never an abstract backdrop to the scene. The realistic depiction of the interior attests to the artist’s highly refined sense of colour. The rendering of the dark areas in various nuances of grey and brown, but also the contrast they create with the light coloured tones of the floor, provide a stabilizing element for the delicate hues of the complexion and augment the figure’s spatiality.