Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901) L'Estampe... Lot 463

Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901) L'Estampe Originale. 1895. SIZE: 33 x 23 1/4 in./84 x 59 cm PRINTER: Imp. Edw. Ancourt, Paris DESCRIPTION: “By 1893 if there were any doubts that there was a printmaking renaissance and that lithography dominated this general print revival, those doubts were quieted forever by a new publication entitled L’Estampe Originale... From March 1893 to early 1895, in collaboration with [critic] Roger Marx, [André] Marty published... a series of quarterly albums of ten prints each (except for the last which contained fourteen prints) in the media of etching, drypoint, mezzotint, woodcut, wood engraving, gypsography and lithography. In all, the publication encompassed ninety-five prints by seventy-four artists representing the young avant-garde such as Lautrec and the Nabis, as well as their established mentors including Gauguin, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, Chéret, Whistler, Bracquemond and Lepère. L’Estampe Originale offers a remarkable cross-section of the most advanced aesthetic attitudes in fin de siècle French art” (Color Revolution, p. 22). Marty felt that Lautrec “deserved ‘a place of honour in the golden book of the modern print’... [and he] accorded Henri exactly that place, using him as the artist for the cover of the first issue” (Frey, p. 323). Lautrec shows us his favorite model, Jane Avril, at his favorite lithographic workshop, Ancourt, studying a proof pulled by Père Cotelle, the experienced printer at the Bisset press behind her. (Art Nouveau; Artist: Toulouse-Lautrec; Literary; Jane Avril)