That Anquetin’s drawings strongly influenced Lautrec’s work is evident, while Raffaëlli, Degas and Renoir were his particular gods in art. Whether Ibels influenced him, or vice versâ, it is difficult to judge; but in any case there is a remarkable similarity in the aims and peculiarities of their art.
DE TOULOUSE LAUTREC
Paris—Collection Bernheim
AT THE MOULIN ROUGE
(Oil-Painting)
There is a magnificent poster of the poet-saloon-keeper, Aristide Bruant, by Lautrec, which alone would have been sufficient to place him high among modern artists. Bruant in a large soft hat and wrapped in a cloak of a gorgeous subdued blue, moves with vivid energy across the sheet. His strong face, printed in grey, is wonderfully rendered with a few telling strokes. Little less attractive is his Bruant at the Ambassadeurs Music Hall. These are but two of many fine posters, done since his first essay in 1888, to advertise the stars of that peculiar firmament of the Cafés Chantants, to which Lautrec was drawn as a moth to the flame.
He lithographed posters of Cissy Loftus, of the beautiful Anna Held, La Goulue the dancer of the Moulin Rouge, and May Belfort; and being particularly attracted by the picturesque possibilities of Yvette Guilbert, with her then lithe figure and inevitable long black gloves, he introduces her into many of his works. Then there is a remarkable poster advertising Babylone d’Allemagne, and a yet more striking one for La Vache Enragée, where we see a mad cow charging an old coloured dandy down a street. There is also the startling advertisement for “L’artisan moderne,” and the truly terrible “At the Foot of the Scaffold.” Apart from these there are his posters “in little,” and programme-covers, such as those for Le Missionaire and L’Argent.
The very peculiarities and incomprehensibilities inherent in Lautrec’s work were sure to arrest attention, and demand that scrutiny which is of the very essence of the successful poster. In every one of Lautrec’s poster designs there is something strikingly unusual. Very rarely is a figure drawn in its entirety; the margin cuts off part of it, otherwise the design would have been too conventional for him.