This extremely simple yet exquisitely wrought profile sketch masterfully captures a personality and illustrates the qualities that set Lautrec apart. His was an unsentimental art of bold originality which eschewed the sentimentality of some Impressionists on the one hand but did not take refuge in a studied neutrality on the other. The artist could and would not claim to be without an estimate of his subject's character here; it is a stunning example of saying a great deal with an economy of means.