Proof of his initial untainted spirit and of his expectation that Montmartre would simply be a good environment in which to create his paintings as social observations is that Lautrec hadn’t lost contact with his family and aristocratic side when he started painting this series, a fact that also transpires from his bright representation of the model. In a letter to his mother, he wrote: “The café bores me, going out is too much trouble, there’s only sleeping and painting” (qtd. Frey, 170). Thus, the man who later became famous for his carousals was at this point leading a traditional, balanced life. And so, about his first painting of Gaudin, Carmen (1884), Lautrec wrote in a letter to his mother: “I am painting a woman whose hair is absolute gold,” hinting towards the fact that for him, Carmen, the laundress, was like himself still clean, an embodiment of aristocracy, bearing her crown of golden hair. (qtd. Frey, 171) This painting accurately renders his aristocratic and proper palette, as Lautrec portrays her dressed in a somber black, on a dark background, contrasting with her brightly lit face and golden- red hair. Her golden hair illuminates the painting, even projecting itself onto the background, much like a saint’s halo. The dark background with fiery speckles suggests self confinement, the artist purposely secluding the model from the exterior, immoral, dark world and ‘turning off’ the exterior lights in order to show the fiery light emanating from within, from the model’s face and hair, in an attempt to amplify her sanctity and nobility. This representation, contradicting with her shrewish look that actually attracted him originally, implies that he regarded himself too aristocratic, and perhaps too innocent, to paint her in a palette that would convey modernity and degradation, instead of tradition and morality.