drawing
- Museum number
- 1920,0420.16
- Description
-
Head of a woman in profile to left. c.1893
Blue chalk, on buff paper
- Production date
- 1893 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 146 millimetres
-
Width: 229 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This is one of a small group of portrait studies of prostitutes; it was reproduced in 'Le Figaro Illustré' for 1902, special number 145, p.24. The woman reappears in a number of Lautrec's brothel paintings of the same period. See Dortu D.4.048 where this study drawing is ascribed to a date c.1895, although the same woman features in at least three paintings from around 1893 which supports an earlier date for the drawing. In particular, the BM drawing is the study for the head of the central figure in the pastel and oil on cardboard painting, 'Au salon', 1893 (Dortu P.500) (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, gift of Justin K. Thannhauser, 78.2514.73). The model also appears in the oil on cardboard, 'These Ladies in the Refectory', 1895-6 (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, inv. no. 356.B).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1991/2 Oct-Jan, London, Hayward Gallery, Toulouse-Lautrec, no. 133
1996, BM, French Drawings in the BM, (no cat.)
2012/13 Dec-April, Canberra, NG Australia, Toulouse-Lautrec
2016-17 Sept-Jan, BM, 'French Portrait Drawings' (no cat)
- Acquisition date
- 1920
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1920,0420.16
