Madame Marthe X―Bordeaux

Painted in 1900 and now at the Ohara Museum of Art in Japan, this portrait of Madame Marthe X in Bordeaux dates to Lautrec's later years when he was spending time in the Gironde region near his family's properties. By 1900 his health was seriously compromised by alcoholism and syphilis; he had already spent time in a sanatorium in 1899 following a breakdown. Portraits of this period tend toward a searching, somewhat melancholy intimacy as Lautrec looked at the people around him with the awareness of his own mortality. The Bordeaux setting reflects his partial withdrawal from the Parisian nightlife world that had defined his earlier career.

The portrait demonstrates Lautrec's late economy of means — thin paint across a pale support, with characterisation achieved through minimal but precisely placed marks. The sitter's face is rendered with the unflinching directness that characterises all his portraiture, refusing flattery in favour of psychological revelation.