Fashionable People at Les Ambassadeurs (Aux Ambassadeurs: Gens Chic)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

National Gallery of Art

A man and woman sit across from each other at a small, narrow café table under a porch-like roof in this vertical drawing on tan paper. The people’s skin is the color of the paper, and their clothing and hints of the surrounding are painted with streaks and thin washes of vivid color. Closer to us and to the left, the woman sits in a chair with an arched back. Her face is mostly angled away from us, but she has a delicate nose, and her lips appear to be closed. Her pale turquoise-blue dress has a high neck, a tight bodice, a long skirt, and long sleeves puffed along the upper arm. A black hat with short sprays like a spurting fountain is tucked into her yellow updo. Across from her, the man also has yellow hair. His eyes are almost slits under thin brows, and his small lips are closed and possibly pursed under a thin mustache. He has a square chin and prominent jawline. He wears a black tie and dinner jacket with a white flower tucked into the buttonhole. His shirt and the tablecloth are the tan of the paper. A decanter of a yellow liquid, presumably wine, sits on the table. A gray fenced at elbow height for the seated couple runs across the back of the space. The view under the overhanging roof is cobalt blue with tree canopies shaded turquoise green. A store window across a black street shows a mannequin wearing a pink dress. The scene is loosely sketched and details fade beyond the main couple. The artist signed the lower left corner with his initials, HTL, conjoined in a circle.