New Britain Museum of American Art
56 Lexington Street
New Britain, CT 06052
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For the first time out of Europe, Toulouse-Lautrec & His World begins its U.S. tour at the
New Britain Museum of American Art before moving on to Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, PA.
On view from January 12–May 12, 2013 in the McKernan Gallery, this traveling exhibition is on loan from the Herakleidon Museum, in Athens, Greece and is from the collection of Paul and Belinda Firos, the Connecticut collectors who also brought the museum M.C. Escher: Impossible Reality in 2010.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Divan Japonais, color lithograph, 1893, 808 x 608 mm, Herakleidon Museum, Athens Greece.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lived in Paris during the Belle Époque (Beautiful Era) frequenting cabarets and cafés where he captured its famous singers, actors, his friends and the working class in his highly celebrated posters, prints, caricatures, sketches, and paintings. Greatly influenced by the French Impressionist movement, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is a post-impressionist of the mid-late 1800's. Due to his excessive lifestyle Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died from complications of alcoholism and syphilis in 1901 at age 36.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Eldorado: Aristide Bruant, color lithograph, 1892, 1380 x 960 mm, Herakleidon Museum, Athens Greece.
This exhibition highlights approximately 150 of Toulouse-Lautrec’s rare works on paper including sketches, and some of his iconic posters like
Jane Avril,
Divan Japonais, and La Troupe de Mademoiselle Eglantine. The included posters are incredibly rare and fragile because as temporary advertisements for a particular show they were not done on quality paper. Some of the works are accompanied by appropriate passages from French literature, photographs, and other objects, in order to help the viewer better understand the atmosphere of that time.
