Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Jules Cheret, Paris
Gaston Bernheim, Paris
Private Collection (by descent from the above; sale: Sotheby's, London, 27th-28th June 1988, lot 667)
Galerie Salis & Vertes, Salzburg
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Of the many Parisian performers portrayed by Toulouse-Lautrec during the 1890s, Jane Avril occupied a central role in Lautrec’s depiction of Parisian night-life. The artist probably met Avril in the early 1890s when she performed at the Moulin Rouge, and the two remained friends until the end of Lautrec’s life. As Mary Weaver Chapin notes in the catalogue for the recent retrospective on Lautrec: 'Unlike most cancan dancers, Avril was educated and refined; she kept company with many avant-garde writers of the day and visited the ateliers of leading artists. Paradoxically, she was known for her highly sensual dancing as well as for her ethereal detachment, giving her what decadent writer and dandy Arthur Symons called an "air of depraved gravity"' (R. Thomson et al., Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2005, p. 139).

Before undertaking a poster to promote Jane Avril as a performer, Lautrec had already painted Avril several times, often as a mysterious, detached figure walking the streets of Montmartre.  Lautrec then depicted Avril in two important lithographs, first in a print promoting the publisher of original lithographs L'Estampe originale, an image in which Jane Avril inspects a print as it comes off of the lithographic press. He then used the haunting silhouette of Avril dressed in black as the subject of his poster Divan Japonais promoting the café-concert of the same name.

The present work not only offers a rare insight into the working methods of Lautrec’s lithographic posters, it also shows that Lautrec took the design of this poster especially seriously, going through several steps and studies to arrive at the finished work. Lautrec began with a publicity photograph of Jane Avril (fig. 1), and used this image to create a large oil on board (see: M. G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son œuvre, New York, 1971, vol. II, P. 482). Lautrec chose to accentuate the precarious nature of her position by tilting Avril’s left foot upstage, and shifting her head back to show the dancer rocking back as she kicks her leg. Both changes are visible in the final poster (fig. 2) and both serve to bring to life the relative stiffness of the pose seen in the photograph. Lautrec then made a pencil sketch of the oil and pinned this new sheet to a larger sheet of paper on which he then drew the hand holding the neck of a double bass. The present work is a photograph by the artist of this stage, showing the two juxtaposed drawings. Lautrec then added colour to the present work in a more schematic way than seen in the oil to show how the colour would appear when lithographically printed. It is also in the present work that Lautrec added a form beside the hand which would become the bass player's head in the final poster, and then extended the neck of the instrument to become a border surrounding the performance space. To honour Avril’s sophistication, Lautrec’s composition recalls Degas’s paintings of dancers seen through the orchestra. But the linear border is Lautrec’s own invention, a line that comes out of the scene to surround the performer. With this border, Lautrec shows us that even though we sit cheek-by-jowl with other audience members and our view is partially blocked by the instruments of the orchestra, these potential distractions only focus our gaze on the riveting sight of Jane Avril dancing in front of us.

FIG. 1, Publicity photograph of Jane Avril

comp: 170d_06009    FIG.2, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1893, lithograph, Private Collection