Woman Lifting Her Chemise

Painted in 1901 and now at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, this work of a woman lifting her chemise belongs to Lautrec's final creative year and his sustained documentary interest in female toilette subjects — women dressing, undressing, washing, or arranging themselves in private. These subjects drew directly on Degas's precedent but inhabited a more explicitly demimonde social world. The panel support reflects Lautrec's frequent use of small, portable formats in his later work, when his health made large-scale projects increasingly difficult.

The subject is rendered with the uninhibited directness that characterises Lautrec's toilette series — the action of lifting the garment is captured as a transient moment of unselfconscious movement. His thin paint on panel captures the luminosity of white fabric against warm flesh, the composition resolving into a simple study of cloth, light, and body.