129

  • Repertoire de Jane Avril

  • ca. 1893
  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French 1864-1901)
  • Lithograph in olive green ink, published by Antoine Bosc
  • 27.7 x 22.5 cm., 10-7/8 x 8-7/8" image
  • Lent Courtesy of Private Collection through Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts

Essay by Dana Kau, Class of 2005

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec established Jane Avril as a celebrity in Montmartre (the artists' district of Paris). As she later recalled: "It is to Lautrec that I owe my fame, which dates from the appearance of his first poster of me.My dreams were so far removed from reality! I have fluttered my way through our epoch without revealing an inkling of the depths of my innermost soul." She was the pale, elegant, ethereal performer whose enigmatic demeanor intrigued her receptive audiences. Lautrec's friend, dealer and biographer, Maurice Joyant appropriately described: "She dances like a delirious orchid" within the hothouse environment of the Parisian café-concert (Huisman and Dortu 108). "Of all the pleasures of Paris-the dance halls, circuses, cabarets, and brothels-it was the café-concert and its stars that cast the greatest spell on Toulouse-Lautrec" (Thomason, Cate and Chapin 137). The art of the modern poster reflected the contemporary shift from artists creating works commissioned by elitist patrons towards public works such as advertisements for the cafés and cabarets they frequented. These images now serve as visual records of the microcosm of fin-de-siècle (end of the century) Paris.

Toulouse-Lautrec was the finest of these illustrators, a master in the rendering of human emotion through his adaptation of modern life à la Japonais. With the opening of trade, Japanese woodblock prints came into vogue in European collectors' circles. Characterized by bold areas of flat color, curvilinear forms and the depiction of genre scenes, the stylistic and iconographic qualities of the printed media became the preferred method for highly trained fine artists. Lautrec was by far the most illustrious of these chroniclers of modern life and his favorite muse was Jane Avril. This single-color lithograph depicting Repertoire de Jane Avril demonstrates Lautrec's mastery of caricature and line as well as the popular use of his artwork as illustrations for textual media such as this songbook.

Repertoire de Jane Avril was the cover for a music book, written and edited in Paris by A. Bosc. This particular illustration is organically composed of curvilinear forms in monochromatic olive green ink. The form of Avril is meticulously constructed to produce a character that is both delicate and fluid. Lautrec depicted her celebrated sensuous dance, always alone with lateral movements of her legs, while maintaining a façade of cool detachment. We gaze upward toward the floating figure, delicately lighting on the stage as a butterfly on a flower. Jane Avril was a loyal friend to Lautrec throughout her life, keenly aware that during the course of her career, she "had many a lover, but only one painter" (Huisman and Dortu 108).