Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender en Buste, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Exhibition Label:
"Inspired by Japan," Mar-2003, Cori Sherman
Marcelle Lender was one of many entertainers in the cabarets of the 1890s Montmartre district of Paris that captivated Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Lautrec also collected Japanese prints and had a good selection of the erotic variety. The easy physical pleasures depicted in scenes of Japanese courtesans corresponded directly to Paris nightlife and the brothel residents who defined the artist’s oeuvre. Lautrec practiced drawing lively little ink sketches after the manner of Hokusai, honing his skill at distilling images to their essential contour lines. In this composition, Lautrec echoes the work of Shunei, who one hundred years earlier had pioneered the “big head” style (o-kubie) of actor portraits.

Often considered his most important contribution to modern art development, Lautrec’s posters had much in common with the ukiyoe prints sold on the streets of Edo (now Tokyo). lithography inks, rolled over stones in successive flat layers, suited his painstaking color blending, allowing him to produce bold purples, oranges, and shocking greens. These color combinations would have been at home in any Japanese print, but were new and disturbing to European eyes. The artist’s experiments with spattering and use of gold dust were also based on Japanese techniques he saw used in ukiyoe woodcuts.