Edmée Lescot (from Le Café Concert)
Original title: Edmée Lescot (from Le Café Concert)
kurzbeschreibung
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made this lithograph, Edmée Lescot (aus dem Café Concert), in 1893. It captures a dancer in a white dress with a black bodice and a black hat. The image is a brush, crayon, and spatter lithograph printed in black on wove paper, and it survives in a single state.
Description
The dancer is caught mid-gesture, her arms thrown wide. She wears a white dress with black sleeves and a black hat. A plain dark background keeps attention fixed on her figure, while the black-and-white palette typical of lithography dominates. Fine spatter flecks are scattered across the sheet, lending the impression a lively texture.
Context
Toulouse-Lautrec made the print in Paris in 1893, during a period when he frequented Montmartre's nightlife. The singer and dancer Edmée Lescot appears here as part of a lithographic series created for Le Café Concert. That series documents performers in the well-known cafés and cabarets of the Belle Époque.
Impact
The sheet conveys an immediate freshness and confines itself to essentials. The dancer's animated pose and the sparingly applied spatter give it a sketchy spontaneity. Since the background stays dark, the eye goes straight to the figure, whose presence is strengthened by that contrast.
Technique
For this lithograph Toulouse-Lautrec combined brushwork, crayon, and the spatter technique. It was printed in black on wove paper, with the spatter method leaving fine ink droplets that give the image its own texture. The result is a single print in only one state, characteristic of the series.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)