Maxime Dethomas

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the lap up, a man wearing an ash-brown suit and top hat sits turned mostly away from us, next to a round table, facing a group of at least three women farther back in the room in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible, mostly vertical strokes, and most of the forms, clothing, and objects are outlined in cobalt blue. Sitting in a wooden, ladderback chair, the man’s body takes up the bottom right quadrant of the painting. His skin is painted pale turquoise. His face turns away from us so we see the tip of his nose and the lines of his cheek and double chin. He has short brown hair under his top hat. He holds a silver-topped cane in one hand, which rests in his lap. A glass with some clear liquid sits on the table in front of him, to our left. A peanut-brown column spans the height of the painting just beyond him, near the right edge of the composition. Three women stand closely together in the near distance, in the upper left corner of the painting. At the front of the trio, a woman with a peach-colored face wears an indigo-blue mask over her eyes. A few swipes of paint indicate blond hair, possibly pulled up. She faces our right in profile and stands with her right hand, closer to us, planted on her hip. She wears a bubblegum-pink sleeveless top and form-fitting pants. The skin of her arm and the skin on the face of the woman standing just beyond her is a cream-white tinged with blue. That second woman faces our right in profile, and her blond hair is either short or also pulled up. A teal-green strap of a low-cut dress crosses over the shoulder we can see. A third woman stands in front of this pair, between them and the seated man. She faces away from us and wears a cotton candy-pink robe and hood that completely covers her body. The wall at the back of the room is painted with areas of brick red, moss green, and a grayish mauve pink.