Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted both the public and the private side of Montmartre life, creating not only exceptionally beautiful posters but also depressing pictures of the district’s many brothels. He treated Marcelle Lender in the same way: he contrasted the somewhat brash stage personality of his Chilpéric paintings with the darker-toned, more sympathetic portrait of his lithograph Mlle Marcelle Lender, Bust. The latter picture was one of five lithographs Lautrec made a few years before his death on commission from his friend Maurice Joyant. It became Lautrec’s very last picture of the brilliant stage star, an authentic but not hurtful unmasking of the woman behind the mask.

From the page of Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric”