Moulin-Rouge - Goulue

Moulin-Rouge - Goulue is a poster realized by Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec in 1891.

Description

Moulin-Rouge: Goulue , 1891. 191 X 117 cm. Lithography with 4 colors with use of the Crachis.

Realized by Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec (Henri Marie Raymond Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa), born the November 24th 1864 and deceased the September 9th 1901, old only 37 years.

There exist several places of conservation because several posters were carried out. They were published in approximately 3000 specimens. There is of them one with the museum Toulouse Lautrec with Albi, one with the museum of publicity has Paris, one with the museum of Ixelles in Belgium, exposed to the museum of Montmartre etc Of others belong to particular collections and much were destroyed.

The history of work, its sale

It exposed this poster in the same year to the 8th living room of independent and the annual exposure of the XX to Brussels, two exposures that it to already several côtoyées times. The posters were often taken down walls by collectors and merchants of arts because their commercial value had been very well included/understood.

Description

It is a poster for the Moulin-Rouge. A woman who dances in the medium, a leg in the air, in the foreground on the right a man in the shade, truncated, which takes a great place in the poster, and at the bottom shade of people directed towards the dancer, remarkable with the feet. On the left of the dancer, of the yellow spots symbolize the light. On the whole the principal title, “Moulin-Rouge” writes three times, “Goulue” written in lower part of “Moulin-Rouge” in fat, like “Ball concert”.

Iconography

Topic of work

This poster presents Goulue, high-speed motorboat of the only spectacle of the Moulin-Rouge: the Uproar. It carries out a figure of the here squares which, it, was invented in 1850.

Source of the painter

Since its opening the October 5th 1889 the Moulin-Rouge became most modern of the Cabaret S of Paris. Joseph Oller and Charles Zidler, the two owners of the cabaret, did not choose the top of the hillock badly attended, but the foot of the hillock of Montmartre. It is to recall with nostalgia the mills of Montmartre that they chose to decorate their cabaret with a factitious mill. The framework was unusual and allowed almost all the madnesses. In the garden, one had put a giant elephant coming from the World Fair, in which an orchestra had settled. There was little place of fun fair, of the young women could walk has back of ass for 50 centimes. There was also a scene of café concert at the bottom of the ballroom, inside, where one found also armchairs and some cabins on the floor.

Goulue, as for it, of its true name Louise Weber, is originating in Alsace. She worked like washing machine. One does not know exactly when its career started, but it occurred in various cabarets of Paris. It is only of 1890 has 1895 that it is committed in the Moulin-Rouge. She will be laid off because of her catch of weight. Starting from there its life turns to the forfeiture and she dies in 1929 in misery with the Hôpital Lariboisière of Paris. In spite of the turning which the life of Louise Weber will have taken, Lautrec will remain always his/her friend and its hut with the Foire decorated to him with the Throne. Black and white panel.

The partner of Goulue which one sees here is Etienne Renaudin, called boned Valentine the for his capacities of contorsionist. Lawyer wire, he is wine merchant the day, and dancer amateur the night.

Circumstances of the choice of the subject

Lautrec one was accustomed of the Moulin-Rouge. It was its preferred cabaret and it went there almost every evening to draw, crunch on the sharp one, and also to see his friends and to feel at his place, there or all the singularities passed unperceived. Thus the Moulin-Rouge was already a subject which it took in heart.

Conditions of its realization

In 1891, Zidler organized a contest of posters to celebrate its dancers and Pierre Bonnard took part in it, thus of course that Lautrec. It was the occasion for him to make known its work has a general public, and it is him which gained the order by presenting its paperboard of studies simply.

How the table was received by the public

Day at the following day this poster returned celebrates Toulouse Lautrec in all the capital as well as the Moulin-Rouge. He writes has his mother on December 26th, 1891: “ the newspapers were shown particularly nice with your kid. I send to you a cut, a true Petri honey of incense. My poster gains a triumph over the walls in spite of some errors of the printer which damaged my production a little”.

Hesitation of the painter for the choice of the form, drafts, etc

Lautrec proceeds always in the same way, “teknic business of ” often said it tone joker.

preparatory Drawing with the Charcoal on paperboard. When one puts side by side completed works and the preparatory drawings, one is touched by their similarities.
to save time, it chooses coloured paperboards and it painted there with a painting very diluted with the gasoline which returns rather an effect of Aquarelle.
Then comes the passage over the lithographic stones. He invents also a personal technique using a brush with teeth to give more variety to the colors: it is the crachis.

There exist three preparatory studies including two portraits of Goulue.

Topic treated by other painters?

Jules Chéret had carried out the two first posters of the Mills red: at the time it the largest poster artist of Paris was him. With those, it had also a great success, without innovating too much. It had its own printing works until in 1881 and it is the inventor of the modern lithography thanks to his trichromatic process : primary colors superimposed into three or four pullings, it obtains all the possible varieties of color. In this one, it represented the women who could walk has back of ass in the garden of the cabaret and in no case the insane dances which made the fame of the Moulin-Rouge.

To quote works which the painter carried out on the same subject only

Moulin-Rouge (Raising of the news by Boned Valentine) , 1889/1890, Fabric, 115 X 150 cm. In this work it uses already the system of the truncation, which puts the characters in the zone except framework that we divide with them. This one is a work hinge in the career of Lautrec. It is located between its pictorial work which it will not cease besides, and its discovery of the lithography. It is a prelude to its poster of the Moulin-Rouge.

Formal analysis

All that characterizes it from a formal or plastic point of view

It is one of its larger posters; often it misses the higher band of 27 cm.

Paperboard of study: lights seen top, line of the parquet floor which goes up and which creates a distortion forming a rupture with realism and an effect of movement and imbalance.

The figure of Valentine, in front, is used to emphasize its partner, in particular because it is in black, but as because it on more large scales, almost with the same size as us, spectators. Moreover, the light is put on Goulue, it encircles it, of in top and of bottom.

Very strong contrasts, yellow white against black gray. White on black creating a setback of Goulue: effect of lightness and attraction of the glance of the spectator directly on the underskirt which is the symbol of the Moulin-Rouge and Goulue. It uses the flat tint, the crachis and the dark rings resulting from the Japonisme.

The Typographie is well integrated into the image: Moulin-Rouge writes three times, the lighting of the wings of the mill like an animated image, announcing what will be future twinkling neons. On some posters, one notes that the remainder of the typography is put in transparency not to block the reading of the drawing.

Here the characters are represented so that they are recognized: features, gestures, attributes and movements which are clean for them.

The caricature and the features simplified to the extreme are used not to overload and transmit at the same time the message.

To call upon other documents which represent the same thing but in a different way

Jules Chéret had a model which one called Cherette, a stereotype of the woman of the time, nice, merry, elegant and always moving and identified by the sharpest color, yellow or red. Nothing to see with the cabaret dancer who raise their skirts: here the woman is still modest in spite of her large low neckline. In the second poster, one vaguely recognizes Goulue thanks to his hairstyle and the portraits of the other dancers in bottom, but the poster does not reflect yet the singularity of the Moulin-Rouge and its chahuteuses.

Moulin-Rouge of Jules Chéret . One goes back to 1889 and the other of 1890.

Historical context

Place du table in the work of the painter

This poster is a work of maturity because one recognizes there a perfect control of the organization of space and the simplicity in which Lautrec can make re-appear the singularity of people. But at the same time, it should be stressed that it is a first experimentation of the lithography.

Does she announce a novel mode of representation?

The technique of the lithography was already known for a long time: it is Aloys Senefelder which, in 1796, invented with Munich this technique of engraving on stone.

The lithography was ideal to return accurately its research directed towards the Cloisonnisme that Lautrec inaugurated in 1888 with its table With the Fernando circus: the rider . The cloisonnism, strongly influenced by the japonism, was elaborate with Pont Swallow-hole by Emile Bernard. It is founded on the use of large flat tints of colors which are encircled. At the beginning, this term, derived from partitioned, is used has to indicate in the manufacture of the stained glasses the process which consists in crimping a enamel stop metal appearing the feature of the drawing.

What is modern in this poster is thus not it technical in itself, but rather the way in which Lautrec was useful about it (flat tint, rings, crachis, etc), as well as the representation itself which holds of the caricature. Lautrec, if it is not connected has any current of the time, works near all those which will influence the nabis as well as many outstanding artists his time.

Work in the pictorial career of the artist compared to other works which it painted

The family of Lautrec is resulting from the French nobility. The count Toulouse Lautrec, his father, has as a passion the horses, hunting, and practical painting as well as wax to be modelled. Art is not at all in contradiction with their social status. Henri is reached of a congenital osseous disease due to the consanguinity of their parents who are cousins. He fractures both Fémur S, which then prevents it from growing and which precipitates and supports its vocation.

Quotation of Henri: “ And to say that if I had had the longer legs, I would never have made painting! . ” Already, before receiving the teaching of Rene Princeteau, friend of his father and animalist painter, it fills his books of schoolboy of sketch and caricatures.

Then in 1882, Princeteau presents it to Leon Bonnat, professor of very severe drawing, auprès of which it receives an academic formation. After the closing of the workshop of Bonnat, he becomes the pupil of Fernand Cormon, another academician, where he becomes acquainted with several artists, of which Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard. In 1884, it settles in Montmartre and meets Degas which it appreciates much. It starts to attend the cabarets which become the subjects of its works. Never he devoted himself to academic art, even if this teaching been useful to him all the same. He painted only one still life of very academic style, a cheese, but it was not found because, according to her friend Gauzi, perhaps that Toulouse destroyed it rage after it was refused with the Living room.

It thus moves away little by little from the academism and leans on the Impressionnisme without really sticking to it either. The young person Routy, the character is detached from the bottom instead of melting itself there as in impressionism. As soon as it did not like a rule, it did not stick to it: gropings, not yet of well defined style.

Pupils of the workshop of Cormon, whose Lautrec, considered the technique of the cloisonnism. It is as as from this time as Lautrec really started to be impassioned for the Japanese prints and their characteristics. Later, it goes even until simplifying to the extreme its signature by using the shape in circle which strongly points out the symbolic system and esthetics japonisantes. Consequently, one perceives more maturity in his works, one notices there a real construction such as in “ With the Fernando circus: the rider ” 1887/88 “ With the ball of the mill of the Wafer ” 1889, “ Moulin-Rouge ” 1890.

Gauzi, friend and biographer of Lautrec, said: “ In Louvre, Olympia made during with odalisque Ingres; there was what to worry the young people and to make them hesitate. One sought to be directed. Those which were quite wise had only one goal, the Living room, and by this means of arriving at professorship, the well paid portrait, the table ordered by the State, which promised to put a little butter in spinaches. Others, without disavowing the large Masters, refused has to imitate them indefinitely. It was necessary to seek its personality, to go from front, to find new means of expression. Lautrec, after having followed Bonnat, had started to clear up its pallet in the workshop of Cormon. At that time, it signed the portraits of his shop buddies, Grenier and Emile Bernard, but soon it was to move deliberately towards impressionism ”. Portrait of Emile Bernard , 1886.

Then, attending the closed houses, it painted there the women in their daily newspaper and takes again subjects which it had already covered in the past, like the horses or the circus. He also works for the White Revue . Poster for the White Review , 1895.

Under which conditions the poster was born: context socio-policy and cultural

One is in the IIIème republic, made up in 1870. In 1905 separation of the Church and the State. The school becomes laic. In 1889 took place the World Fair, which inaugurates the Eiffel Tower. The law of the July 29th 1881 founds a very liberal mode as regards press and accelerates the development of posting in the cities. End 19th beginning 20th, it is the artistic explosion: the places of entertainments multiply; one sees all the social classes côtoyer the cabarets. The Theater S, the races, the Circus S, etc offer a whole panorama of leisures. And the beginning of the 20th century sees the assertion of the social laws: retirements, allowances of the industrial accidents, weekly rest.

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