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HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901)
75
●
[BABYLONE D’ALLEMAGNE.] 1894.
47
1
/
2
x33
1
/
2
inches, 120
3
/
4
x85 cm. Chaix, Paris.
Condition B+: restoration along repaired tears and creases in margins and
image; minor losses and restored losses in margins. Framed. Unexamined out
of frame.
The design and printing of the poster for Babylone d’Allemagne was partly
an inside joke and partly an international scandal. The poster advertises a
book written by Lautrec’s friend Victor Joze. The two had worked together
before, in 1892, when Lautrec designed a poster for
la Reine de Joie
, another
book by Joze that resulted in a huge scandal. Two years later Joze again
approached Lautrec to help promote his latest work,
The German Babylon
,
exposing the decadence of the Berlin aristocracy. The poster, one of Lautrec’s
most elaborate designs, is composed of two opposing diagonals. The first is
the line formed by the ascending cavalry parade, with a handsome young
officer astride his mount. The second diagonal is formed between the hirsute
sentinel and a passing bourgeois couple, the woman casting her glance at the
blond rider. The white haunches of the horse (the uninked paper itself ) are
outlined in Lautrec’s favored olive green, attracting the viewer’s eye. He also
uses the green in
crachis
(splatter), in the background. When Joze saw the
finished poster, with the prominently displayed horse’s rump and the
unattractive German guard (allegedly a caricature of the Kaiser), he felt that
it was too dangerous to post all over town, and that there might be a political
backlash against it. Lautrec had obviously anticipated his friend’s concern,
and to thwart any plans to squelch the image, had paid for the printing and
distribution of the poster himself. This is the
RARE
version before text.
Adriani p. 96, Delteil 351 II, DFP-II 832 (var), Art Nouveau p. 97 (var),
Affichomanie 108 (var).
[30,000/40,000]