1895 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec "May Belfort" Poster
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GUEST:
This poster came into our family in the 1960s. My grandfather went to London for work. We did find some documentation indicating that this is where the poster was bought. My grandmother was not a cat lover. So, the family lore goes, my grandmother did not want it displayed. We believe it, it ended up maybe in a closet, kind of out of official view, probably for several decades.
APPRAISER:
I've been involved with the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW for over two decades. I say it because in that entire time period, we have not had a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec on the show. So, this is a first. And it's very exciting to be able, finally, to, to bring to camera something by the work of an artist who was so pivotal in the poster market. In 1891, he was the first serious artist who applied his craft to the brand-new field of commercial lithography, and he designed posters mostly for his friends who were musical performers.
GUEST:
I see.
APPRAISER:
His friends included Aristide Bruant, his friends included Jane Avril-- these giants of the French music hall stage. And then there's this work for May Belfort, who was not a particularly famous performer. In fact, May Belfort wasn't even her original name. It's her stage name. She was an Irishwoman whose name was May Egan.
GUEST:
I see.
APPRAISER:
And she came to Paris through the music halls of London. And her performance consisted of her onstage holding a cat and sort of purring a little bit incoherently but telling double-entendre jokes and delivering slightly saucy lines while holding her cat.
GUEST:
(chuckling)
APPRAISER:
Apparently, her most famous line was, "I have a little cat, I'm very fond of that." That's the kind of... that was the basis of her show. Now, Toulouse-Lautrec was a denizen of the Parisian demimonde, the, the nightlife of Montmartre. He would go to these music halls. And the story has it that when he saw her perform, specifically, when he heard her cite this inane little line, he immediately fell in love with her.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And he was so smitten with her and so smitten with the inanity of her act, that he decided to design a poster for her, which would have been a huge deal for this little-known performer to have a giant artist, the size of Toulouse-Lautrec, design the poster.
GUEST:
Sure.
APPRAISER:
It's kind of ironic, he was a very small man.
GUEST:
Sure.
APPRAISER:
But he was a giant in the art world. And by all accounts, it's this very sort of tender and humane handling of her which a lot of art critics have said over the years shows how much he really cared for her. It's an incredibly, deceptively simple design. There's four colors-- there's red, there's green, there's black, and there's yellow. You can see a little bit of yellow in her hair and in the cat's ribbon.
GUEST:
Mmm.
APPRAISER:
He's created the idea of her being onstage with this very simple diagonal line. He's very basically represented the background of the stage behind her, but he really focuses on her face. This is Toulouse-Lautrec's signature right here. You can see-- his name was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, so you see an H, a T, and an L in his monogram.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
It's an original lithograph, so it's not one of a kind. Several hundred, if not 1,000 of them, were printed. We actually don't know the exact number, because nobody kept track. It was done in 1895. It's not in great condition. The Toulouse-Lautrec market is a fascinating market, and he's, he's a famous poster artist. He's a national hero in France. He's a great painter. He's renowned for so many different things. The first poster he designed for the Moulin Rouge, his, his explosion onto the poster scene, is a half-million-dollar poster. But one of the things that really drives the value of Toulouse-Lautrec posters is the condition. Given that this piece is not in great condition, I would say that currently, at auction, I would estimate it between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST:
Okay, well, that's very nice. No, that's perfect. We're going to keep it.
APPRAISER:
I would say, also, that if you were to put maybe $1,000 into restoring it, in better condition at auction, it would fetch between $8,000 and $12,000.
GUEST:
Wonderful.
APPRAISER:
At its peak in 2007, in very fine condition, it sold for $40,000.
GUEST:
Oh, nice.
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