Portrait of the artist's cousin Dina Toulouse-Lautrec

This 1883 pastel portrait depicts a relative with a notable surname: the sitter is identified as Bashkirtseff's cousin Dina Toulouse-Lautrec, a name that connects the portrait tangentially to another towering figure in late nineteenth-century French art. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, also born 1864, was Bashkirtseff's near-contemporary, and while the family connection was through a different branch, the shared surname across this portrait and his celebrated body of work creates an intriguing biographical footnote. Bashkirtseff chose pastel — a medium associated with intimacy, immediacy, and the representation of women — for this family portrait, producing a work of personal affection rather than professional exhibition ambition. Now held in the Musée d'Orsay alongside her other major works, the pastel demonstrates the breadth of her technical skills beyond oil painting.

Pastel allows Bashkirtseff to work in her characteristic warm tonal range with particular immediacy — colours are applied directly without the drying time oil demands. The medium's powdery surface gives flesh tones a bloom and softness especially suited to intimate portraiture. Layering and blending of pastel sticks creates the tonal gradations necessary for convincing three-dimensional modelling, while the drawn line beneath gives facial features structural clarity.