The artist’s Fin de Siècle designs promoting the entertainments of Paris are regarded among the trailblazers of mass-produced commercial art. Borrowing techniques from Japanese woodblock prints, the artist used sinuous lines and flat planes of colour to create his distinctive posters for the popular cafés, concert halls, and cabarets of Montmartre.
They retain a keen colleting following.
The selection at Swann on August 3 includes some of the artist’s most famous designs with estimates ranging up to $30,000 for a single example.
Among the highlights is the well-known poster La Revue Blanche from 1895, estimated at $20,000-30,000.
It depicts Misia Natanson, the wife of one of the founders of the literary magazine Revue Blanche.
Renowned as a brilliant, charming and beautiful woman, she was a muse for other artists and writers within bohemian circles including Pierre Bonnard, Jacques Villon and Felix Vallotton among others. Toulouse-Lautrec's image shows Misia skating and is deemed to be uncharacteristically soft and endearing, leading some to suggest that he had fallen in love with her.
Églantine Design
A copy of Troupe de Mille Églantine from 1896 is also included in the sale, estimated at $20,000-30,000.
Lautrec designed this poster in response to a request from his friend Jane Avril and her co-performer Églantine to design an image for a show at the Palace Theatre in London. The name of the theatre does not feature in the design so they could use the poster for another appearance.
The four dancers (Églantine, Jane Avril, Cléopatre and Gazelle) are depicted performing the Quadrille Naturaliste – the dance that had become world famous after being performed at the Moulin Rouge and dubbed the "French Can Can" by a British producer.
Another of the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec posters at Swann Auction Galleries, Troupe de Mille Églantine, 1896, which is pitched at $20,000-30,000.
The auction of close to 600 lots will be separated into sections based on style and subject matter including Art Nouveau, early Russian designs, cars, travel and ocean liners.
The travel section includes the Art Deco-inspired design Holland-America Line, a 1936 creation by Willem Frederick Ten Broek showing the classic view of the liner’s enormous hull. It is guided at $3000-4000.
The announcement of the latest sale comes as Swann have now decided to expand their vintage posters auctions by staging “at least four per year”.
