The Toilet
John Thomson
British, 1837–1921
1873
A collotype by John Thomson portraying a woman at her toilette attended by two companions, intended to record a private moment of everyday life in 19th‑century China.
What strikes you is the quiet intimacy and texture—the gleam of silk and coiled hair, the small boxes and teacups on the table, and the composed, almost staged stillness of the three figures compressed into a single domestic scene.
Part of Thomson’s pioneering photographic work in East Asia, this image helped introduce Western audiences to daily life abroad and played a formative role in the rise of documentary and ethnographic photography in the late 1800s.
Medium
Collotype
Dimensions
18 11/16 × 13 9/16" (47.5 × 34.5 cm)
4 15/16 × 4 1/8" (12.5 × 10.4 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Warner Communications, Inc.
Accession
53.1981.22
Palette
Exhibitions
