Taking Inspiration From Degas and Utamaro

Each week for the duration of the exhibition, we’ll focus on one work of art from Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque, on view Feb. 4 through April 30, 2017.

Divan Japonais_Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Divan Japonais, 1892–93. Crayon, brush, spatter, and transferred screen lithograph, printed in four colors. Key stone printed in olive green, color stones in black, yellow, and red on wove paper, 31 3/4 × 23 15⁄16 in. Private collection

Divan Japonais advertises the reopening of a café-concert located on the rue des Martyrs, renovated to be Japanese in theme. For this work, Toulouse-Lautrec adapted a Japanese aesthetic—flat cropped shapes, unusual vantage points, dark contours, and vibrant colors—featured in work like Kitagawa Utamaro’s The Nakadaya Teahouse. By the 1880s, Toulouse-Lautrec had seen ukiyo-e prints at Paris galleries and the Exposition Universelle. Like many of his contemporaries, Toulouse-Lautrec collected Japanese art and even ordered specialty supplies from Japan.

For the poster, Toulouse-Lautrec also modified key motifs from Edgar Degas’s influential painting The Orchestra at the Opera, such as the cropped view of a performance and the stage obstruction of the double bass. He shows Jane Avril as a spectator, clad in a black dress and hat, with her date, critic Édouard Dujardin, a great supporter of Japanese art. Both appear more engaged in their surroundings than the entertainment. On stage, distinguished by her long black gloves, is singer Yvette Guilbert, her head cropped by the curtain. Guilbert described the venue: “I mustn’t raise my arms incautiously or I should knock them against the ceiling. Oh! That ceiling where the heat from the gas footlights was such that our heads swam in a suffocating furnace.”

Toulouse-Lautrec and Cycle Michael

Each week for the duration of the exhibition, we’ll focus on one work of art from Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque, on view Feb. 4 through April 30, 2017.

Simpson Chain, The

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Simpson Chain, 1896. Brush, crayon, and spatter lithograph, printed in three colors. Key stone printed in blue, color stones in red and yellow on wove paper, 32 5⁄8 × 47 1/4 in. Private Collection

Following the invention of the pneumatic tire in 1888, cycling became a fashionable, modern-day sport. Competitive cyclists raced at Vélodrome Buffalo and Vélodrome de la Seine on Sunday afternoons, with Toulouse-Lautrec in attendance. In 1896, Louis Bouglé, the French representative of the English Simpson cycling company, commissioned Cycle Michael, which advertises a bicycle chain. Bouglé also managed Welsh racing champion Jimmy Michael, shown here sucking a toothpick as he is timed by trainer “Choppy” Warburton.

Bouglé rejected the poster design due to the inaccurate rendering of the chain product. Toulouse-Lautrec printed 200 impressions in olive-green for cycling fans.

The Simpson Chain—Toulouse-Lautrec’s second attempt at the Simpson cycling company’s commission—was a success. For this work, he accurately depicted the chain and infused the scene with dozens of cyclists zipping around the track, their blurring wheels creating the effect of speed. French cyclist Constant Huret follows two pacing riders, the first partially cropped to reinforce movement. In the center of the ring stand Bouglé and company owner William Spears Simpson.

Performers of the Belle Époque: Aristide Bruant

Each week for the duration of the exhibition, we’ll focus on one work of art from Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque, on view Feb. 4 through April 30, 2017.

Ambassadeurs Aristide Bruant_Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Ambassadeurs, Aristide Bruant, 1892. Brush and spatter lithograph, printed in five colors. Key stone printed in olive green, color stones in orange, red, blue and black on two sheets of wove paper, 52 15⁄16 × 36 5⁄8 in. Private collection

Presenting himself as the voice of the underclass, Aristide Bruant performed in the persona of a rough laborer singing songs in Parisian slang about the conditions of the poor. After making a name for himself at the Chat Noir cabaret, he opened the Mirliton in 1885, warning his audience that it was “for those seeking to be abused.” Once inside, patrons, especially those “born with a silver spoon in their mouth,” were subjected to his mocking insults. Bruant’s notoriety grew beyond Montmartre to more sophisticated entertainment venues near the Champs-Élysées.

Toulouse-Lautrec created this striking poster for Bruant’s limited engagement at the Ambassadeurs, one of the city’s oldest café-concerts. He first drew his sitter at half-length in pencil, then created a large scale watercolor and gouache study. With bold, expansive regions of color, Toulouse-Lautrec simplified and synthesized Bruant’s most identifiable attributes—his overbearing confidence and his signature costume (dark cloak, hat, red scarf, boots, and walking stick)—and immortalized the entertainer. After Pierre Ducarre, the manager of the Ambassadeurs, rejected this radical poster, Bruant threatened: “You will post it on either side of the stage. . . . If it is not done . . . then I’m not going on!” Both the performance and the poster were tremendously successful, but Ducarre refused to pay for the design.