In 1891, painter Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was commissioned to do a print advertising the opening of the Moulin Rouge, a much-hyped new nightclub in the bohemian Montmartre quarter of Paris. The print, known today simply as “Moulin Rouge,” was so popular that, within days, admirers were stealing them from kiosks throughout the city. With the success of “Moulin Rouge,” Toulouse Lautrec’s career changed course. Prints became his primary medium; flamboyant can-can dancers, brightly painted clowns, seedy nightclubs and crowded bars became his subjects. However, to focus solely on Lautrec’s widely celebrated prints would neglect a critical component of the artist’s repertoire and misrepresent his view of the avant-garde, glitzy world of late nineteenth-century Paris.

Copies of these prints line the foyer outside the new exhibition on Toulouse Lautrec at the Fogg Art Museum. The focal point of this exhibit, however, is the collection of six portraits, entitled Three Women: Early Portraits by Toulouse Lautrec, from his pre-Moulin Rouge days. Reflecting impressionist and even Renaissance influences, the portraits are among Toulouse Lautrec’s most conservative works, standing in sharp contrast to the decadent, brazen prints outside.

Works from five museums worldwide are combined with one portrait in the Fogg’s Wertheim collection to shed some light on an aspect of Toulouse Lautrec’s repertoire that until recently has been overlooked. Previously, his more conventional, intimate portraits were considered “student works, illustrations of popular song, or demonstrations of social issues in nineteenth-century Paris,” Sarah Kianovsky, assistant curator of Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Fogg, writes in the show’s essay. By contrast, this exhibition seeks to allow the viewer to see Toulouse Lautrec’s portraits untainted by his more famous prints and to focus instead on the intimacy and vulnerability of the subjects and the intense relationship between painter and subject.

The first of the three women showcased is Carmen Gaudin, a friend of the artist and the subject of a wide variety of works from sketches to oil paintings. The earliest of the six paintings, “Carmen Gaudin” (1884) is a formal, stark portrayal of the redheaded model, who wears a black dress and poses against a black background. She is not confrontational; her gaze falls somewhere above the head of the viewer. In “Carmen Gaudin in the Artist’s Studio” (1888), the subject stares directly at the viewer from a seat in a room cluttered with colorful canvases and furniture, wearing a white blouse, with her hands folded in her lap. The juxtaposition of the two portraits gives a more comprehensive view of the model: whether surrounded by the disorder of Lautrec’s studio or on her own against a plain background, Gaudin is exposed to the viewer; she is not shielded by the vibrant make-up, ostentatious costuming or limber dance moves that characterize Toulouse Lautrec’s later prints.

The next pair of portraits focuses on Suzanne Valadon, a model-turned-artist who was a close friend and student of Toulouse Lautrec. Both “Young Woman at a Table, Poudre de Riz” (1887) and “The Hangover” (1887-1889) depict Valadon in an empty tavern, seated with her elbows propped up on a table. Devoid of the usual uproarious goings-on of a Paris nightclub, the scene in both paintings is sullen, pensive and lonely. A small tin of face powder at the table in the first painting exposes the naturalness of the subject—caught without her make-up on—and perhaps even Valadon’s more personal desires: rice powder was worn by courtesans in an attempt to imitate the pale faces of the women of the Parisian aristocracy. “The Hangover” (from the Fogg’s own Wertheim Collection) features a brooding Valadon leaning over a table adorned with a glass of wine; she seems undisturbed by—or even unaware of—the presence of an outside viewer.

Of his experiences painting Jeanne Wenz, Toulouse Lautrec wrote, “I’m doing the portrait of a beautiful sister of one of my friends, which is a lot of fun.” Both “A la Bastille” (1888) and “Portrait of Jeanne Wenz (La Femme au Noed Rose)” (1886) feature a self-assured, dignified subject. Whether momentarily seated at a table—ready to spring up and mill about—or formally seated for a traditional profile painting, Toulouse Lautrec’s barmaid subject sports a capricious smirk. Again, the artist transcends different settings and poses to humanize and endear to us a confident and dynamic subject.

In light of the success of films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, flamboyance, debauchery and decadence have characterized our concept of late nineteenth-century Paris—an impression epitomized by Lautrec’s vibrant prints of that period. Examining Toulouse Lautrec’s lesser-known portraits, however, sheds new light on the essence of the individuals who constitute that world.

visual arts

Three Women:

Early Portraits by Toulouse Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

Fogg Art Museum

Through July 21