Reclining Woman, Lassitude (Femme sur le dos, Lassitude) from Elles

Reclining Woman, Lassitude (Femme sur le dos, Lassitude) from Elles is a seminal lithograph created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1896. This print is one of twelve constituting the celebrated Elles portfolio, a foundational series in late 19th-century French graphic arts. The artist utilized the medium of lithography to achieve broad areas of tone and expressive, economic line work, capturing the intimacy and unvarnished lives of women within Parisian maisons closes.

Toulouse-Lautrec deliberately subverted conventional academic and commercial representation by depicting figures in moments of unguarded, private existence rather than staged activity. In this specific image, the subject is observed resting prone, her back largely facing the viewer. The compositional focus emphasizes exhaustion or withdrawal, directly corresponding to the emotional state implied by the title, Lassitude. The mastery displayed by Toulouse-Lautrec in handling the lithographic process allows for a direct transmission of observation onto the paper, a technique that demonstrates the artist’s debt to both Degas and Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

The complete Elles portfolio, published in 1896, remains a critical document of French urban society during the Fin de siècle. Toulouse-Lautrec’s unique perspective, gained from prolonged observation while residing in these environments, stripped away the romanticized glamour often associated with such depictions. The resulting imagery is noted for its powerful psychological depth and compositional strength. As a collection of prints, the series was highly influential on subsequent generations of artists exploring modern life and graphic expression. Today, this significant artwork, classified as a print, ensures the artist’s enduring legacy. High-resolution images of this work often enter the public domain, maximizing its accessibility for scholarship. This particular impression of Reclining Woman, Lassitude is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.