Yvette Guilbert singing the song: Soularde. 'Drunk' by Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901
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Yvette Guilbert singing the song: Soularde. 'Drunk'

Original lithograph in olive green ink. 1898. Signed with the red monogram stamp. Also signed with the monogram in the stone. Issued as no 5 in the series: Album Yvette
Guilbert. Drawn in 1898. From the edition of 82 impressions issued by the Leicester Galleries, London 1930, and printed at the Westminster Press. Stones donated, to the Lautrec
Museum, Albi, after the edition. First issued 1898.
Ref: Wittrock - T-Lautrec The Prints no 256. Adraini - T-Lautrec Graphic Works no 256.

Excellent impression in olive green ink. On pale cream japan-type paper. Generally excellent condition; very faint virtually imperceptible trace of a mount line. Full margins. Sheet: 13 3/4 x 10 5/8ins. Image to border: 11 ½ x 9 1/2ins (294x242mm)

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Yvette Guilbert was the most famous of all the music-hall performers - or 'Diseuses' - in Paris in the 1890's. Lautrec very much admired her act; he was fascinated by her extravagant hand gestures (in long gloves) as well as her expressive poses and facial expressions as she sang the bawdy irreverent songs, or rather spoke them in a dirge like quasi-monotone. It is the atmosphere of her extraordinary act which he captured so brilliantly in his prints of her.
In 1894 Lautrec drew a series of lithographs to decorate a text about Yvette Guilbert written by the critic Geffroy. In 1898 when Yvette Guilbert was in London the English print publishers Bliss and Sands approached Lautrec to draw another series of studies of her in lithography. These were first issued in 1898. In the 1920's the English dealers The Leicester Galleries had acquired the stones for these lithographs from the heirs of Bliss and Sands, the original publishers. They decided to make another edition of the prints before donating the stones to the Toulouse Lautrec Museum in Albi (where they now are). 82 impressions were printed of each image, some subjects in green ink, as here, some in bistre. With the approval of Albi the Leicester Galleries were permitted to stamp the prints with Lautrec's monogram.