Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, A Menilmontant de Bruant, TLautrec, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Limited

Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered. Paper Size: 17 x 13 inches. Excellent condition. Notes: From the folio, TLautrec, A Portfolio Of Twelve Reproductions of Lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1946. Rendered by Albert Carman; published the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Studio Publications, Inc., New York and London; printed by Holme Press Inc., New York, in an edition of MMMD, 1946. Excerpted from the folio, Some artists have the faculty of summing up an epoch, of silhouetting its characteristic traits and gestures. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was such an artist: in his drawings and lithographs the Paris of the Gay Nineties is preserved in all its vivacity, particularly the night life with its fin-de-sicle mingling of tinsel and glamor. His subject matter, which might have become trivial and outdated or only of historical in-terest, is transformed and made memorable by his superb draftsmanship and incomparable sense of style. He had a trenchant line, a knack of vivid placement, and a sardonic grasp of character. Character, almost to the point of caricature, was his forte. "Truly," exclaimed Yvette Guilbert when she saw one of his drawings of her, "you are the genius of deformity." More than anyone, too, he was responsible for raising to the dignity of an art form the poster, which had its first great vogue during the period. He was born in 1864, an aristocratic descendant of the Counts of Toulouse. He died of drink and dissipation at the age of thirty-seven. That he was crippled and conspicuously ugly, possibly gave him a certain detachment from life and therefore the impulse to record it. He started making lithographs in 1892, and in the next nine years drew mote than three hundred and fifty, a fascinating panorama of the theatre, music hall, and cabaret, of the demi-monde and sporting world. It is from this imposing oeuvre that the following twelve prints have been selected for reproduction.TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the sometimes decadent affairs of those times. Born into the aristocracy, Toulouse-Lautrec broke both his legs around the time of his adolescence and, due to the rare condition pycnodysostosis, was very short as an adult due to his undersized legs. In addition to his alcoholism, he developed an affinity for brothels and prostitutes that directed the subject matter for many of his works recording many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec is among the painters described as being Post-Impressionists, with Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat also commonly considered as belonging in this loose group. He influenced generations of artists including Picasso who had traveled to Paris where he at first imitated Toulouse-Lautrec's style.

17 x 13 in