Woman before a Mirror

"Woman before a Mirror" by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painted in 1897, offers an unsparing glimpse into the private life of a Parisian prostitute during the fin-de-siècle period. Executed swiftly in oil on cardboard, this medium choice allows the artist to utilize the rough texture and neutral tone of the support itself, contributing to the work’s immediacy and subdued atmosphere. This painting belongs to a pivotal late phase of Lautrec's career, where he focused on observational documentation of the interiors of brothels, deliberately avoiding the moralizing or romanticized views typical of academic painting.

The work depicts a female nude standing with her back to the viewer, absorbed in her toilette. Her posture is heavy and unselfconscious, emphasizing the labor and exhaustion inherent in her profession rather than classical idealized femininity. The composition utilizes the mirror not as a device for self-reflection but as a spatial element, fracturing the interior view and obscuring the subject’s face. This compositional choice maintains the intimacy of the moment while preserving the anonymous nature of the woman, shifting focus from individual portraiture to the social observation of marginalized lives.

Toulouse-Lautrec's masterful handling of the oil paint uses thin, expressive washes, leaving brushstrokes visible and creating a sense of rapid, almost journalistic capture. This focus on the casual, mundane aspects of life in Montmartre distinguishes Lautrec’s approach from his Impressionist predecessors. As an essential piece documenting urban social history, the painting resides within the prestigious collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like many of Lautrec’s iconic visual records of Parisian life, the image is widely distributed and often made available in the public domain for art historical study and academic prints.