Maurice Joyant, 1864-1930

One of the four studies illustrated P. Huisman & M.G. Dortu 1964, p. 150.
Two of the four studies illustrated Prestige de la Photographie 10, October 1980, p. 60.

The French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is 'surprised' by his friend Maurice Joyant while defecating on the beach at Le Crotoy, Picardie.  Visible in the third print in the series is the name of the newspaper Lautrec is reading: Le Petit.   

Joyant met Toulouse-Lautrec when they were eight years old at the Lycée Fontanes in Paris.  He became Lautrec's loyal friend and supporter, and later his gallerist and first biographer.  Joyant founded the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in the city of Albi where the painter was born.  He donated the original negatives from which these prints were taken, together with an important collection of Lautrec's drawings, photographs, negatives and personal belongings, to the museum.

Although only an occasional practitioner of photography himself, Lautrec's fascination with the medium is evident in the many extant photographs of himself taken by photographers such as Joyant.  He appears in a number of different guises and settings, for example in Japanese costume, as a 'Musulman' and, frequently, dressed as a woman.  Jean Sagne, writing in Prestige de la Photographie in 1980, believes that it is here - in the construction of his own image through the management of set and props - that Toulouse-Lautrec the photographer is most evident.