La Rousse in a White Blouse

La Rousse — the redhead — was a type that recurred throughout Toulouse-Lautrec's work, in part a reflection of his personal predilections and in part because red-haired women were visually distinctive in the milieu of Montmartre models and professional women. Carmen Gaudin, his most frequent red-haired model in the late 1880s, was a laundress who sat for him repeatedly, and paintings of her in various informal settings represent some of his most sustained studies of a single female figure outside the brothel or cabaret. The white blouse against the red hair creates a chromatic opposition that drove several of these compositions.

The chromatic tension between the copper-red hair and the white blouse dominates the composition, set against a neutral background that prevents any competing visual interest. Lautrec renders the hair with warm, loaded strokes quite different from the thin, rapid notation he uses elsewhere — its color evidently required more deliberate building.