HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (Albi, 1864 - Saint-André-du-Bois,... Lot n° 4

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL FROM THE HOUSE ON RUE D'AMBOISE 1892 Oil on canvas, oval medallion 29 x 24 cm Provenance Former Alexandre Farra collection Former Henry Lapauze collection Former Madame Pomaret collection Former Monsieur Urban collection, acquired 1959 Private collection A.K., Paris Exhibition Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, 1931, Toulouse-Lautrec, trentenaire, n° 85 (mentioned by M. G. Dortu 1971) Bibliography Douglas Cooper, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, N.E.F., 1955, p. 7 and pl. 23 (about the painter's relations with the girls of the rue d'Amboise house) Tableaux modernes..., catalogue of the Ader sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1 December 1959, lot 91, reproduced pl. XXXIII Madeleine Grillaert Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son OEuvre, New York, Collectors ed, 1971, II, reproduced p. 273, n° P. 446 (with numerous other bibliographical references quoting and reproducing our portrait) Tout l'OEuvre peint de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, Flammarion, 1986, presented p. 114, n° 419 This female portrait by Toulouse-Lautrec is a work from his great period (1888-1898) during which he was attracted by all the violent manifestations of life, all the more so if they were accompanied by a hint of artistic creation. He led a dissipated life at the time, spending some of it in the brothels of Montmartre. His assiduous frequentation of No. 8 rue d'Amboise allowed him to enter the intimacy of his daughters: the "madam" who ran the establishment called upon his painting talents when she decided to renovate her salon. She commissioned him to paint sixteen wall panels to match the Louis XV furniture. Our painter took on the task with great enthusiasm. He immediately produced a series of sixteen oval medallions, each containing a life portrait of the girls in the house, in a rococo style frame, composed of flower garlands in the manner of Madeleine Lemaire and Ernest Duez. He was no longer a client, he was a member of the house. When speaking of Lautrec in the brothel, one must never forget the tone of friendship rather than politeness he used with the poor girls, whom he perhaps loved less for their naked flesh than for their tenderness, which he strove to achieve, even their profession of tenderness. What moved him in the brothels was, small households, jealousies, quarrels and mending, what he found there of family life, more than anything else: the meals in common Thadée Natanson, extract from Un Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Geneva, Cailler (1951) The frames disappeared when the décor was dismantled after the 1914-1918 war. What remained were the individual portraits of each of the girls. On ours, the girl has red hair. A small hat covers her. Her flowing hair, undone at the nape of her neck, forms a heart-shaped clasp above her ear, which is adorned with a large creole. Her bust, with its wide neckline, shows the birth of her breasts. In another medallion, she is a girl wearing an aigrett e (fig. 1). The sixteen medallions were kept together before being dispersed in the 1950s. Ours, presented in a rocaille frame, is a rare and precious witness to that blessed era when Van Gogh, it is said, came on purpose to the brothel in the rue d'Amboise to admire the works of Toulouse-Lautrec...