Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec moved to Paris in 1882 and was instantly drawn to the city’s demi-monde — the entertainers and sex workers of Montmartre; the cafes, concerts and circuses; and the racetrack. He found his subjects in the fleeting crowds and urban spectacle of Paris.

In a brief and brilliant career of just over a decade, he produced some of the best-known images of Paris and its nightlife in the form of lithographic posters and prints, inspired by the formal elements of traditional Japanese print-making: flat colour surfaces; asymmetrical, cropped compositions; and pronounced outlines. He frequented the brothels and clubs, befriended the women who worked there, and produced a sensitive and profoundly human portrait of their world in a series of lithographs known as ‘Elles’.

This oval portrait is one of fifteen the artist made of women who worked at a brothel on the Rue Amboise.