Elles: Woman Sleeping

Elles: Woman Sleeping by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is a masterful color lithograph created in 1896. This evocative work belongs to the artist's highly influential Elles series, a collection of eleven prints devoted to the intimate, unvarnished lives of Parisian sex workers. As a color lithograph, the piece utilizes the advanced printmaking techniques of the era, allowing Toulouse-Lautrec to achieve the intense color saturation and characteristic brush-like textures that define his graphic output.

The composition centers on a figure curled deeply asleep in bed, rendered with characteristic bold outlines and a perspective reminiscent of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Unlike contemporary artists who often depicted these women in theatrical or moralizing contexts, Toulouse-Lautrec approached his subjects with profound empathy, emphasizing their private, vulnerable moments rather than their public roles. He sought to document the quiet monotony and human realities of life in Montmartre, positioning himself as a sympathetic observer of the marginalized.

This particular print exemplifies the artist's pivotal role in the shift towards modern print culture in France during the 1890s. The medium of the lithograph allowed him to share his observations widely, treating the process of printmaking with the same seriousness as oil painting. This important example of French Post-Impressionist graphic art resides in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Such significant prints, widely studied today, are often featured in museum archives and high-quality images become available through public domain resources, aiding scholarly research on the period.