Toulouse-Lautrec — Selected Works

Portrait of Jeanne Wenz

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1886

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this portrait when he was only 22 years old and still an art student. He used subtle coloring with accents of pink and green and showed his subject, Jeanne Wenz, in full profile, a compositional device often found in Renaissance portraiture. Wenz was the mistress of Frederic Wenz, Toulouse-Lautrec’s fellow student at the painter Fernand Cormon’s studio. She was also the friend of Suzanne Valadon , an artist in her own right and a frequent sitter for Toulouse-Lautrec. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1887

This work, set at a circus, captures the tense moment in which a female trick rider prepares to stand up on her horse and leap through a paper hoop held by a clown. The horse gathers speed, spurred on by the whip of famous ringmaster Monsieur Loyal. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec may have based the garishly made-up rider, dressed in a tutu of gauze and sequins, on Suzanne Valadon, a former circus performer, model, and artist with whom he had a nearly three-year relationship. The rider seems to snarl at Monsieur Loyal, who glares back at her. Toulouse-Lautrec’s setting is the same circus in Montmartre depicted in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s portrait of the Wartenberg sisters . This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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The Laundress

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1888

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec produced this drawing to illustrate an article about Parisian summers. It presents the type of poorly paid worker who remained in the city while others traveled to escape the urban heat. Because the image was to be reproduced in black and white, Toulouse-Lautrec thinned and brushed ink, scraping into it to expose fine white highlights. Like several artworks in Cleveland’s collection, the drawing was formerly owned by Roger Marx, a French collector, curator, and art critic who built perhaps the most substantial holdings of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work around the turn of the century.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

Moulin de la Galette

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1889

With this painting of the dance hall known as the Moulin de la Galette, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec established his reputation as the chronicler of the Montmartre district’s famed nightlife. A wooden barrier bisects the composition, dividing the frenzied action of the dance floor in the background from the stillness of the women waiting in the foreground. Toulouse-Lautrec used turpentine to thin his paint and applied it in loose washes, a technique known as peinture à l’essence . The result is a sketchy style that conveys both the immediacy of the artist’s observations and the tawdry atmosphere of his subject. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Yvette Guilbert

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1889

This drawing depicts Yvette Guilbert, a popular Parisian cabaret performer who was the subject of numerous prints, posters, drawings, and paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Here, Lautrec began to work out the composition of a poster that Guilbert commissioned from him to publicize her upcoming season at Les Ambassadeurs, a popular night club. A more finished study is part of the collection of the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, France, but the poster itself was never realized after Guilbert rejected the design as unflattering.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

At the Moulin Rouge

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1892

Café-concerts were popular venues for drinking and entertainment in late nineteenth-century Paris and attracted the interest of artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889, was the most famous of the café-concerts, and Toulouse-Lautrec was a habitué of the establishment—he even had a permanently reserved table. His painting Equestrienne (1887–88), now also in the Art Institute’s collection, was acquired by the owner of the nightclub as decoration for the lobby. At the Moulin Rouge is a cleverly observed group portrait of the (in some cases) infamous customers and entertainers who formed part of the artist’s circle. Standing in the background, the dancer La Goulue arranges her hair. Seated at the table are dancers La Macarona and Jane Avril, as well as photographer Paul Sescau, poet Édouard Dujardin, and vintner Maurice Guibert. Singer May Milton peers out from the right edge of the painting, her face harshly lit and a shocking acid green—the Moulin Rouge was designed to have electric lighting and Toulouse-Lautrec reveled in the artistic possibilities of artificial glare. The artist himself appears in the center background of the painting, a diminutive figure accompanied by his much taller cousin, the physician Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Jane Avril

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1893

In a tangerine-colored dress, Jane Avril performs a high kick, her arms lost among the voluptuous ruffles. Peeking out from beneath her petticoat, her toe points to a double-bass player. The neck of the instrument frames the poster. In contract to the rooted musician, Avril appears birdlike in her frenzied movements. Yet her expression is one of sadness or exhaustion, at odds with the glamorous nightclub setting. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Aristide Bruant, in His Cabaret

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1893

The gallant performer Aristide Bruant became known throughout Montmarte for the ability to capture the sentiments of working-class Parisians in his songs. Here Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec illustrated the essence of the audacious singer, portraying his trademark hat, scarf, and cloak in broad, flat planes of color to create an iconic image. Bruant himself was often seen in this garb on stage at his famous cabaret Le Mirliton, where he offered his witty, often-acerbic diatribes against the upper class. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Sleepless Night

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1893

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec experimented with the recently invented technique of lithography. In addition to fine art prints, he often created ephemera, including posters and sheet music—such as this example. It was commissioned as a cover illustration for Nuit Blanche , a poem by Jean Goudezki that was set to music composed by Désiré Dihau, a well-known bassoonist.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

La revue blanche

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1895

La revue blanche (The white review) was a literary magazine popular amongst artists, writers, and intellectuals living in Paris. Named for the “white” optical effect produced by mixing all colors together, the editors sought contributions from artists, writers, and poets working in a wide variety of experimental styles. In this poster design, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicts Misia Natanson, the wife of an editor of the journal, who often hosted gatherings for the contributors and their friends. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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May Belfort

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1895

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was inspired by café concerts, popular places of Parisian entertainment that featured singers or other performers. This drawing depicts May Belfort, one such entertainer, who the artist discovered in 1895 during a visit to the popular nightclub Les Décadents. Belfort soon became one of Lautrec's favorite models and is seen here wearing the ruffled dress and bonnet that became a signature of her performances. The singer adopted a babyish voice and stood motionless on the stage, encouraging her fans to shout lyrics along with her.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

May Milton

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1895

Posters grew in popularity after 1881, when many restrictions on their placement were lifted and it became unlawful to remove or destroy them. The first exhibition of posters took place in 1884, and they were soon accepted as a legitimate art form. Lautrec, a gifted draftsman, excelled at designing arresting lithographs. May Milton , one of his boldest compositions, illustrates Lautrec's innovative style based on a dynamic pattern of flat, simplified, brightly colored shapes and dramatic silhouettes. Lautrec, an astute observer of character and physical features, captured the life of a decadent era in his radically concise, vigorous representations. May Milton was an English dancer who appeared at the Moulin Rouge, one of Paris's most popular café-concerts. This poster was made to advertise her tour of the United States.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

Elles

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1896

The French publisher Gustave Pellet, hoping to attract new customers, persuaded Lautrec to make a series of ten prints, plus frontispiece and cover, depicting brothels. Although it was not unusual to see prostitutes pictured in the popular press, Lautrec was the first well-known, successful artist to tackle this subject. The set was a commercial failure when it first appeared, perhaps because the scenes are not erotic. Lautrec had said that "they are women to my liking," and between 1892 and 1895 he often lived in various Parisian brothels for weeks at a time. This allowed him to witness the daily lives of the women, including the intimate acts of sleeping and bathing, and to sense their suffering. The result is that only two of the scenes show prostitutes as desirable temptresses. The remainder depict the mundane routine of the women's private world, their caring for each other, their boredom, and, living on the periphery of society, their sense of isolation. Lautrec did not take a direct moral stand. He portrayed the women sympathetically, restoring to them their humanity. One scene shows Juliette Baron, whose life of vice has led to premature aging, bringing her daughter Paulette breakfast. Other images depict the women at private moments, bathing or combing their hair in natural, relaxed poses, unaware of being observed. The beauty of the drawing and use of color makes this set one of the masterpieces of late nineteenth-century French color lithography.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

At the Concert

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1896

Lautrec also produced a number of striking images of identifiable audience members putting themselves on display in their loges, or theater boxes. This seemingly incomplete impression comes from one plate of a multicolor zincograph. It shows the unlikely pairing of the courtesan Emilienne d’Alençon with Lautrec’s cousin, the doctor Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran at the Cabaret des Décadents. The zinc plates are all now at the Art Institute of Chicago, where this impression was printed. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

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Le crocodile, Menu

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 1896

In November 1896 Lautrec visited Château de Blois with friends, where they discussed Marie de Medici, the 17th-century French queen who was exiled to Blois by her son Louis XIII before later making a daring night escape. This tale inspired Lautrec’s menu, in which his friends masquerade as Marie and her rescuer. A puzzling crocodile and a bespectacled ghostly apparition also appear, only heightening the scene’s mystery. In a rare act of self-portraiture, Lautrec observes from below. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗