The artiste Caudieux zig-zags across a stage seen in violent perspective, while down in a corner is a worried member of the orchestra studying the coming bars. Caudieux’s head is full of life and pent-up strength, and the whole movement of this quaintly placed figure is striking in the extreme.
Jane Avril’s poster shows an anæmic-looking artiste doing a high kick on the stage. The foreground is occupied by a monster hand holding the head of a ’cello in the orchestra.
The poster for the Divan Japonais, on the other hand, shows us a lady and gentleman in the audience listening to a singer on the stage, behind an orchestra. Of the singer we see monster black gloves, and everything but the head; of the orchestra we are shown two ’cello heads, and, of the conductor, the arms alone. The lady in the foreground—who looks as though she always turned night into day—is wonderfully depicted, as is her companion, the dissipated, bearded swell. Perhaps his most graceful work in the poster line is that advertising Elles.
Finally in the poster for La Gitane, an unsavoury actress, arms akimbo, who comes right out of the design in the left hand foreground, smiles over her shoulder at the bold bad brigand who strides, in shadow, out of the poster at the top right hand corner. In all these and his other posters the lettering is bold and legible.
Lautrec’s studies in the music halls are uncompromising in their garishness; he apparently does not attempt to seek beauty where it exists in such small quantities, or has been so carefully hidden. He delights in the flare and glare, the powder and paint, the discords and the inconsistencies of the thing. He prefers the raucous screech of the bold-faced jig, whose reputation as a songstress rests on her fine limbs, to the exquisite song of the highly-trained opera singer. He would reject gold in favour of tinsel. Yet this same man in another mood would paint a splendid and refined portrait.
Then there is Lona Barrison, jauntily leading her white horse out of the ring, followed by her manager with the pale chrome hair and beard; and then the hideous negro—“Chocolat dancing in a bar.” All of these figures, despite their faulty drawing and their element of caricature, carry conviction with them.
Lautrec’s travels in Spain, in England, Holland, and Belgium seem to have left little impression on his work. It is probable that the unhealthy surroundings and late hours imposed by his studies in café-concerts, in green-rooms, in libertine ballrooms and worse, hastened the end of that frail, feverish life—a life like that of a gaudily coloured rocket, brilliant and soon spent.
In his later years he had evinced a great attraction towards the repulsive and the gruesome, and took a pleasure in seeing medical operations performed. Curiously enough, his studio window overlooked a cemetery.
By De Toulouse Lautrec