Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

In 1892, the singer-songwriter and writer Aristide Bruant was at the height of his career. He had become friends with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who used to come and see his shows at the Mirliton, a cabaret that Bruant had opened a few years earlier. He commissioned several show posters from Lautrec, including this one. “Ambassadeurs” was a chic café-concert on the Champs-Élysées. Tall, with a broad, rounded chest, a mischievous eye and an ironic smile, the figure is depicted in an imposing manner. His massive silhouette fills the entire foreground. Bruant wears loose-fitting velvet clothes and heavy boots; when he goes out, he dons a long cape-style coat and a hat with enormous brims. With just a few strokes, Lautrec captures the very essence of his model’s personality, reducing him to his defining features: the red scarf, the large black hat and the club he uses as a walking stick. He depicts the singer in a three-quarter profile, making use of both his silhouette and the background against which he stands out. There is no background; only the figure of the stagehand in the shadows, rendered in black, introduces a sense of depth. As an aside, the manager of the ‘Ambassadeurs’ had agreed to pay for the poster but was taken aback when he saw it, finding its composition too daring, too crude and vulgar for his somewhat snobbish clientele. It took Bruant threatening not to go on stage for him to accept it. He demanded that it be displayed on either side of the stage and plastered all over the town on the very evening of the performance. 

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