Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

Exhibited by Wildenstein & Co. Inc.

Material Gouache and pencil on paper

Dimensions 67 × 49.8 cm

Status Vetted

About the Work

This painting is one of a series of gouaches commissioned from the artist to illustrate Gustave Geffroy’s two-part essay on Parisian cabaret nightlife in Le Figaro illustré published in July 1893 and February 1894. The July 1893 installment (issue no. 40) entitled “Le Plaisir à Paris. Les restaurants et les cafés-concerts des Champs-Elysées,” reproduced seven color plates after Lautrec’s designs printed by photochemical chromotypography, included the present composition among several café-concert subjects. After publication, the present gouache entered the stock of Boussod, Valadon & Cie, the firm that directed and printed Le Figaro illustré during these years.

Albert Caudieux (1850-1917) was a singer at Le Petit-Casino famed for his humor and, much to Lautrec’s delight, his protuberant belly and jerky, explosive stage movements, which earned him the sobriquet “l’homme-canon” (the human cannonball). Lautrec has accentuated this comic feature here by showing his subject in profile. Two other works of the same year as the Figaro illustrations—a poster commissioned by Caudieux (Wittrock P7) and a lithograph (Delteil 35/Wittrock 25) showing the singer doing a jig across the stage—call attention to another humorous aspect of his anatomy, his disproportionate, spindly legs. The print, Caudieux at the Petit Casino, was the eighth plate of the artist’s related series Le Café Concert, a separate but concurrent project comprised eleven lithographs printed by Edward Ancourt and published by l’Estampe Originale.

There is a preparatory oil sketch for the present composition in the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi (Dortu P.472; oil on board, 68.3 x 48.6 cm.).

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Provenance

Boussod, Valadon & Cie., Paris
Paul Cassirer (1871-1926), Berlin
Mrs. Thomas Newell Metcalf (née Elizabeth Paine), Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1935
New York, Sotheby’s, November 15, 1989, lot 32, illus. in cat. (color) ; acquired by
Private collection

Literature

G. Geffroy, “Le Plaisir à Paris: Les restaurants et les cafés-concerts des Champs-Élysées,” Le Figaro illustré, No. 40, July 1893

M. Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, I, Paris, 1926, pp. 144, 278. Illustrated p. 173 (with title “Caudieux dans sa loge. L’Homme Canon”)

R. Huyghe, “Aspects de Toulouse-Lautrec,” L’Amour de l’Art, XII, No. 4, April 1931, p. 155.

E. Schaub Koch, Psychanalyse d’un peintre moderne. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 1935, pp. 203, 208

G. Mack, Toulouse-Lautrec, New York, 1938, p. 192

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Œuvre graphique de Toulouse-Lautrec (cat. by J. Adhémar), 1951, n.p., cited under no. 38

G. Caproni and G.M. Sugana, L’Opera completa di Toulouse-Lautrec, Milan, 1969, p. 109, no. 366A.

M.G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son œuvre, New York, 1971, II, p. 286, no. P.473.

Chicago, The Art Institute, Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings (cat. by C.F. Stuckey), 1979, p. 203, cited under no. 58. Illustrated fig. 2

San Diego, Museum of Art, Toulouse-Lautrec: The Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection, 1980, p. 212, cited under no. 86 and note 1

B. Foucart and G.M. Sugana, Tout l’œuvre peint de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 1986, p. 117, no. 472Aa.

H.D. Schimmel, ed., The Letters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Oxford, 1991, p. 241, cited under letter 307, note 1

E. Julien, Toulouse-Lautrec, New York, 1991, illustrated p. 59 (color)

London, Hayward Gallery and Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Toulouse-Lautrec, 1991-1992, p. 207 and note 7 (entry by R. Thomson)

Rome, Complessa del Vittoriano, Toulouse-Lautrec: Uno sguardo dentro la vita, 2003-2004, p. 309, cited under no. III.10. Illustrated p. 67