Milestone Monday – Toulouse-Lautrec
On November 24th, 1864, Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born in Albi, in southern France. An artist immersed in the Paris nightlife of the late 19th century, he is better known as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, or simply Toulouse-Latrec, He died in 1901 at the age of 36, due to complications from alcoholism and syphilis. An exhibit of his lithographs ran at the Art Institute of Chicago several years later, and the bulletin of the Art Institute characterizes his “vigorous and sardonic” work:
There are actresses and music-hall singers, dancers and café-idlers, poets and shopmen—in short all the characters that went to make up the inimitable fin de siècle scene.
Here we highlight three books from our collection. Toulouse-Lautrec, by French art historian Jacques Lassaigne, was published by The Hyperion Press in Paris, in 1939. The text is translated from the French by Mary Chamot.
Also from 1930s Paris, Lautrec, a portfolio with six plates, and a commentary by Francois Gilles de la Tourette, was published by Skira in 1938.
And finally, Affiches de Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: dix reproductions en couleurs, published in Basel in 1946 by Les Éditions Holbein, is introduced by Willy Rotzler. The portfolio contains color reproductions of a number of Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster advertisements.
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--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern
