Jane Avril, from the portfolio, “Le Café Concert”

Description

Toulouse-Lautrec and his fellow artist Henri-Gabriel Ibels contributed 11 plates each to the portfolio "Le Café-Concert". This album of original prints, sold originally in loose-leaf form, was targeted to the middle-class collector. It featured the most celebrated Parisian performers, including Jan Avril, shown here in the first print in the portfolio. The setting is the Moulin Rouge, as indicated by the lamp in the upper left. Avril exploited the jarring contrast between her sweet bonnets and her frenetic dance steps. The dancer is shown clad in her signature billowing skirt, whose hem is rendered calligraphically. Toulouse-Lautrec supplemented brush-drawn lines by spattering ink onto the lithographic stone, a technique derived from Japanese woodblock prints.