La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé on Stage in New York

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The featured lot of the sale of Swann Galleries in New York on December 17 is at number 132 of the catalog.

It is an original example of the most famous and first Lautrec poster, made in 1891 for Moulin Rouge, the renowned Parisian cabaret. The cabaret makes dancing and concert every night, and masked ball on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Such pleasure houses are a tradition in Paris for several decades. There were a wide range of them, some were luxurious, others were dirty.

Toulouse-Lautrec, fan of Parisian life, used the poster as a technique to capture the stars of this underworld. The glory of Aristide Bruant survived until today, that of Yvette Guilbert is outdated and forgotten. Here, our poster introduces La Goulue, a dancer of French can-can. She is represented in dancing action, the right leg thrown to horizontal. We see in the foreground an enigmatic grayish character, stange mixing of serious and underground middleman, who used to be named Valentin le Désossé ("Boneless Valentine"). The artist has signed the poster with his monogram HTLautrec.

It was a large poster (about 2 x 1.2 m),in three sheets, found rarely as full as here and with all its text. This quality makes it estimated by Swann at 250 K $.

Coincidence or sudden enthusiasm of New Yorkers for La Goulue? Another example is the top lot of the large exhibition to fixed-price sale organized by Poster Auctions International. No less than 100 posters and drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec are exhibited by them from 13 December to 11 January at the International Poster Center, 601 W. 26th St., 13th Floor, New York, NY 10028.

Poster Auctions International was kind enough to become a member of Art Auction Knowledge. I invite you to visit their website, and their page and their releases on our network.

And of course, if you go through New York, do not miss this exhibition.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The exceptional copy presented by Swann sold 250 K $ excl. This price, which is exactly at the low estimate, is an excellent result.