A Saint-Lazare

Details

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901)
A Saint-Lazare
signed 'H.Treclau' (lower left)
brush and black ink, blue pencil and white chalk on card
18 5/8 x 15 ¾ in. (47.4 x 40 cm.)
Executed in 1885

Provenance

Aristide Bruant, Paris.
Mme. Lescuyer, Paris.
François Cartron, Paris.
Raphaël Gérard, Paris.
Jacques Lindon, Paris (acquired from the above); on deposit at the Chase Bank, Paris, from where it was confiscated by the Devisenschutz-Kommando, 1940.
Transferred to the Jeu de Paume (ERR no. Li 24).
Recovered from Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany, from where repatriated to France on 31 July 1946 and restituted to the Lindon family on 6 February 1946.
The Gallery of Modern Art, New York (Jacques Lindon).
Wildenstein & Co. Inc., New York (acquired from the above, 1947).
Acquired from the above by the late owner, July 1948.

Literature

Le Mirliton, no. 39, August 1887 (illustrated on the cover).
La Plume, no. 43, February 1891 (illustrated on the cover).
M. Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:, Paris, 1927, vol. I, pp. 97-98.
M. Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Dessins, estampes, affiches, Paris, 1927, p. 186.
M. Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Soixante-dix reproductions, Paris, 1930, pp. 19-20 (illustrated).
P. Mac Orlan, Lautrec: Peintre de la lumière froide, Paris, 1934, p. 78.
E. Schaub-Koch, ed., Psychanalyse d'un peintre moderne : Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 1935, pp. 137 and 173.
G. Mack, Toulouse-Lautrec, New York, 1938, pp. 97-98, 204 and 304.
F. Jourdain et J. Adhémar, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 1952, p. 30.
J. Lassaigne, Le goût de notre temps: Lautrec, Geneva, 1953, p. 35.
F. Gauzi, Lautrec et son temps, Paris, 1954, pp. 48 and 82.
P. Courthion, Le goût de notre temps: Montmartre, Geneva, 1957, p. 58.
H. Perruchot, La vie de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 1958, p. 113.
M.G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre, New York, 1971, vol. V, p. 464, no. D.2.842 (illustrated, p. 465; with incorrect dimensions).
J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: 1881-1906, London, 1991, vol. I, p. 218 (La Plume, cover illustrated; dated 1886).

Exhibited

Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Les chefs-d’oeuvre des collections privées françaises retrouvées en Allemagne par la commission de récupération artistique et les services alliés, June-August 1946, p. 62, no. 157.
New York, Wildenstein & Co. Inc., Six Masters of Post-Impressionism, April-May 1948, p. 44, no. 35 (illustrated).
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, Toulouse-Lautrec, October 1955-February 1956, no. 84 (illustrated).

Conditions of sale

Lot Essay

The present work featured on the cover of Aristide Bruant’s magazine, Le Mirliton, and hung on the wall of his celebrated cabaret of the same name. Five years later, in February 1891, it would be reprinted on the cover of La Plume (fig. 1). In the first volume of his biography of Picasso, John Richardson wrote of the drawing’s effect on the 20-year-old artist’s melancholic blue-period depictions of the women’s prison at Saint-Lazare: “Picasso would have seen [the present work]… it hung on the cabaret walls. Lautrec portrays one of the whores in her syphilitic bonnet writing an abjectly adoring letter... The drawing echoes the wry, sentimental mood of Bruant’s ballad. Here is the last verse of this ballad (prototype of the ballads Edith Piaf would sing fifty years later):

"I end my letter with a kiss
So long, man of mine,
Though you’re not affectionate
Oh, how I adore you like
I used to adore God, and Papa,
When I was a little girl
And used to go to communion
At Saint’-Marguerite” (A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. 1, p. 218).

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