Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Albi 1864 – 1901 Saint-André-du-Bois, attributed
Mademoiselle Lander
Watercolour on paper
19.5 x 14 cm, with frame 57.5 x 47.5 cm
Monogrammed lower right

This work depicts the French actress and entertainer Marcelle Lender (1861-1926), who was portrayed several times by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It is said that the painter and graphic artist went to the operetta Chilpéric twenty times in 1895 to see her. Here you can see a glimpse of the actress as she leans down towards the audience during a song. Her incredible stage presence is rendered dynamically by the colourful contours.

During his time as a bohemian, Toulouse-Lautrec selected motifs from the entertainment venues of Paris, which gave lithography a boost as a graphic technique. He depicted central personalities and urban scenes of the Belle Époque, focussing on individual people, sometimes in a caricature-like manner, thus demonstrating his self-perception as a portraitist. His colour lithographs, in which he skilfully used colour accents, have a high recognition value.

This could be a preparatory drawing for the well-known lithograph “Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender, en buste” by Toulouse-Lautrec, which was published in the German magazine PAN (Volume I, No. 3, October 1895), one of the most important art journals of the late 19th century. Eight plates were used, one plate per colour, although this was technically difficult to implement. Prints can be found in numerous important collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 49.55.163) or the Museum of Modern Art (inv. no. 149.1946).

Literature:
Jean Adhémar, Toulouse-Lautrec. His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints, New York 1965, cat. no. 131.
Adriani Götz, Toulouse-Lautrec. Das gesamte graphische Werk. Bildstudien und Gemälde, Dumont 2005, WVZ no. 115 b.
Wolfgang Wittrock, Toulouse-Lautrec. The Complete Prints, London 1985, cat. no. 99.