?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901) REINE DE JOIE. 1893. 53x36 1/4 inches, 134 1/2x92 cm. Edw. Ancourt, Paris. Condition B+: repaired tears, minor losses and restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; creases in margins and image. Matted and framed. Two-sheets. Lautrec designed this poster for his friend, writer Victor Joze, advertising a book, whose full title was Reine de Joie / Moeurs du Demi-Monde [Queen of Joy / Customs of the Demi-Monde]. As salacious as the story was, the scandal surrounding the book was just as lurid. The main character was a "fictitious" Baron Rosenfeld, who is depicted as the lecherous old man in the poster. The very real Baron Rothschild felt that the character was based on him and he successfully sued the publishers; unsold copies of the book were removed from circulation. The poster itself is a superb combination of composition, caricature and insinuation. With a masterly use of the blank paper, Lautrec uses the diagonal of the table to divide the image in two. On the bottom is a rough sketch of the laid table, while on top he uses solid masses of color to delineate his characters. In fact, the two people depicted are real Parisian personalities (who had nothing at all to do with the book): the man is Georges Lasserre and the woman is Luzarche d'Azay. Thadée Natanson, writing in his publication La Revue Blanche, in February 1893, commented that this poster "in particular gave us a shiver of delight: this delicious Reine de Joie [is] bright, attractive and superbly perverse." Delteil 342, Wittrock P3, Adriani 5, DFP-II 823, Wine Spectator 49, Art Nouveau p. 98.
