Woman with a parasol

Painted in 1889 and now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, this work of a woman with a parasol in an outdoor setting places Lautrec in dialogue with the Impressionist tradition of feminine leisure subjects. By 1889 Lautrec was firmly established in Montmartre and beginning to develop the distinctive linear, Japanese-influenced style that would characterise his mature work. The parasol figure had been a staple of Impressionist iconography — Monet, Renoir, and Manet had all treated it — and Lautrec's engagement with the subject signals his awareness of this legacy while pushing toward a more assertive graphic approach.

The outdoor figure is rendered with relatively open, sketch-like brushwork that retains Impressionist spontaneity, though Lautrec's characteristic economy of line is beginning to assert itself in the confident silhouetting of the figure. The parasol's warm colour is set against a cool landscape ground, creating a focal chromatic contrast.