The theme of women at their toilette so to speak permeates the entire history of art and once again became a subject of choice in the second part of the 19th century, though freed from its conventions and stiffness: hence Degas, with his supple women's bodies in the bathtub, and Renoir, with the pure sensation of naked skin and hair left unfettered in the open air, and Courbet's faces without artifice and make-up. Puvis de Chavannes for his part took a more classical approach to the theme, at least at first view.
The depiction of a woman holding her hair or having it styled by another woman is recurrent in his work. The female figure in La Toilette [Lady at Her Toilette] corresponds to a canon common to many paintings but does not refer to any precise fashion or period: it seems to evolve in a timeless place, like that of Jeunes filles au bord de la mer [Young Girls at the Seaside] with a detached air and classical drapery. A sober touch, rigorous construction, everything contributes to the creation of a stable work just like the firm-hipped model in La Toilette. Her distant sensuality introduces a "contained eroticism", thanks in particular to the dry, matt appearance of the paint, which contains very little oil, like the frescoes of the old masters.
If this style relies on the traditions of the past, it is nonetheless imbued with a modern singularity. The layout shows an obvious economy of resources: neutral background, simplified space, person on the left cut... The composition focuses on the hair, which traverses the painting like a golden diagonal, from the servant bending to smooth it to the midnight blue background which sets off its brilliance. The hair is treated as a material that is both heavy and fluid, with a compact appearance. Some of the contemporaries of Puvis de Chavannes, like the neo-impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross, would make a veritable coloured curtain concealing the face completely, and would no longer even need the alibi of the toilet to paint hair with no other purpose than itself.
