Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de (1864-1901)
Le polisseur de marbre (The Marble Polisher)
1882–1887
Oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81.3 × 1.9 cm
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
Toulouse-Lautrec probably painted this work while studying in the Parisian atelier of the popular painter Fernand Cormon. Among his fellow pupils were Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. With its emphasis on careful study of the human anatomy and its use of a famous ancient sculpture as a model, Scythian Slave in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, The Marble Polisher is indicative of the academic training Cormon provided. But Toulouse-Lautrec also uses broken brushwork and colored shadows here-techniques derived from his Impressionist contemporaries. (PUAM)