Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901), Divan Japonais, 1892/93. Color lithograph, 31 5/16 × 23 15/16 in. (79.54 × 60.8 cm). Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. M1966.160.
Poster for the Divan Japonais café-concert
Lautrec employed a sort of visual bait-and-switch in this poster. Diseuse Yvette Guilbert, the performer depicted on stage, would have been easily identifiable by her long black gloves, as would the famous dancer Jane Avril, sitting in the foreground. At the time Lautrec created this poster, neither woman performed at the Divan Japonais, but by featuring them so prominently, Lautrec suggested that one could see them there.
Lautrec’s complex composition—with its unusual cropping and necks of viols waving from the orchestra pit—owes a debt to both Japanese woodcuts and the art of Edgar Degas, but the highly sophisticated, slightly decadent spirit is Lautrec’s own.
Written by Mary Weaver Chapin, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
