Interpretive Resource

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this portrait in 1886, probably after the final Impressionist exhibition. Rather than following the advanced stylistic and iconographic trends of Georges Seurat and the painters of the Neo-Impressionist group which dominated that exhibition, the twenty-two year old artist chose instead to employ the subtle, grayed palette of Salon painters and the deft brushwork of Auguste Renoir, who had already deserted the Impressionists. The understated result reveals that, in 1886, Toulouse-Lautrec was less interested in making waves than in assimilating pictorial strategies from established artists.

The painting represents Jeanne Wenz, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist from Rheims and sister of Frederic Wenz, a fellow student of Toulouse-Lautrec’s at the studio of the painter Fernand Cormon. A surviving photograph of Jeanne Wenz, once owned by Toulouse-Lautrec, shows a well-dressed young woman in front of a wall covered with a flowered print. How far removed this is from the humble studio interior and plainly dressed sitter seen in the Art Institute’s portrait. In the painting, Jeanne Wenz sits dutifully in a common chair, the simplicity of costume and setting, together with the discreet profile pose, emphasizing the delicacy and modesty of her character.

This painting has been linked with the strict profile portraits that were so important in the Renaissance and that we know Toulouse-Lautrec admired for their abstract flatness and elegance. It seems more likely, however, that the artist’s profile representations of various sitters, along with the frontal and three-quarter images one also finds in his oeuvre, must be considered as part of a series of investigations of the human figure from many angles and in many attitudes. With her sharply pointed nose and chin, Jeanne Wenz had a wonderfully active profile, which Toulouse-Lautrec echoed in the strong curve of her thick eyebrows, the stray lock of hair at the back of her head, the jaunty bow at her neck, and the playful shapes of the ladder-back chair. In this carefully controlled portrait, the artist avoided severity by including such details as the diagonal baseboard and the corner of a canvas leaning on the wall to the left of the sitter, relieving the strict verticality of the figure and chair she sits in. All these errant curves and subtle manipulations give character to this portrait of a young woman wearing a pink satin bow.