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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — Elles: Woman In a Corset
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Elles: Woman In a Corset

1896

Like Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec also made a series of color prints depicting the daily lives of women, but instead of portraying bourgeois wives and mothers, his subjects were prostitutes. His series of twelve lithographs entitled Elles boldly confronted the reality of late 19th-century Parisian brothels on the rue de Moulins and the rue de Richelieu, in which rich men's pursuit of pleasure with the daughters of the poor was legal and accepted. Although not portraits of classic beauty, his depictions of Parisian prostitutes embrace the poignancy of human experience. Here, a prostitute unhooks her corset in the presence of a client, her face sympathetically averted from the viewer's gaze.

Medium
color lithograph

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About this work

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Elles: Woman In a Corset, 1896

Like Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec also made a series of color prints depicting the daily lives of women, but instead of portraying bourgeois wives and mothers, his subjects were prostitutes. His series of twelve lithographs entitled Elles boldly confronted the reality of late 19th-century Parisian brothels on the rue de Moulins and the rue de Richelieu, in which rich men's pursuit of pleasure with the daughters of the poor was legal and accepted. Although not portraits of classic beauty, his depictions of Parisian prostitutes embrace the poignancy of human experience. Here, a prostitute unhooks her corset in the presence of a client, her face sympathetically averted from the viewer's gaze.

Medium
color lithograph
Year
1896
Seen at
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Related themes

Print, Modern

More works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Collected by

Cleveland Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard Art Museums