Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Lot n° 2

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Nice. Sur la Promenade des Anglais 1880 Oil on card. 31.8 x 39.9 cm. Framed. Monogrammed, inscribed and dated 'HTL. Nice 1880'. - In fine condition, slight compression to lower corners. Dortu P.33 Provenance Comtesse de Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi/Paris; General Raymond Adolphe Séré de Rivières, Paris; M. Knoedler & Co, New York; Corboud Collection, on permanent loan to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv. no. WRM Dep. 848 (on loan from the Fondation Surpierre) Exhibitions Nice 1957 (Palais de la Méditerranée), Toulouse-Lautrec, cat. No. 5; Paris 2005 (Galerie Schmit), Maîtres Français des XIXème et XXème siècles, cat. No. 64 (with label on the reverse) Literature Maurice Joyant, Lautrec, Paris 1930, p. 252; Jacques Lassaigne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris 1939, p. 38; B. Faucart/G. Mandel Sugana, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris 1986, cat. No. 31; Barbara Schaefer, Französische Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts II. Die Impressionisten und ihre Nachfolger. Die Bilder der Fondation Corboud, ed. by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne 2006, p. 125, with color illus. The painting "Nice. Sur la promenade des Anglais" is a characteristic early work by the French painter Toulouse-Lautrec. Born as Count Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa in Albi in the south of France, he had turned to drawing and painting due to an incurable bone disease and protracted convalescence and made use of the themes of his aristocratic surroundings, which consisted of hunting, horse breeding and falconry. With a preference for movement and animal studies, Toulouse-Lautrec spent his early creative years with the animal painter René Princeteau, who was successful in Paris and a friend of his father. Following Princeteau's example, the young count produced numerous studies of horses and their cavalrymen around 1880/81. When Toulouse-Lautrec spent the summer with his mother in Nice, he created the equestrian scene "Nice. Sur la promenade des Anglais". Lautrec's precise observation of the situation of the moment is what distinguishes this early work, whose movements are clearly described. An elegant lady in a two-horse carriage accompanied by a servant drives along the promenade and meets a young gentleman who lifts his hat in greeting. With regard to the choice of colors and their treatment, Toulouse-Lautrec used the Impressionist style with short brushstrokes and dabs of color, which he placed on the canvas without preliminary drawing and without mixing. Maurice Joyant, Lautrec's childhood friend and the best connoisseur of his work, related our painting to the much better-known "Four-in-Hand in Nice" (Dortu 94), painted in 1881, which enabled him to enter the studio of Léon Bonnat, the celebrated "painter of millionaires", in 1882.