Fanciful ALS in pencil in French, signed "T-Lautrec," three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.25 x 7, no date [but June 1895]. Handwritten letter to an unidentified correspondent, addressed as "Cher maître," in full (translated): "It will happen on Saturday. See Sescau to arrange for us to have dinner together, at my home if you want. Put on a white tuxedo and paint your face over – if possible." In fine condition, with partial splitting along the hinge.
This letter, published as number 414 in Schimmel's The Letters of Toulouse Lautrec, finds the artist reminding his correspondent of a fancy party or ball on Saturday. He explains the dress code – white tuxedo and a painted face – and proposes that the two and their common friend, Paul Sescau, have dinner at his house before the party. The photographer Paul Sescau was a friend of Lautrec who was the first to photograph the latter’s artistic works. When Lautrec was commissioned by Sescau to create a poster for his photographic studio, Lautrec obliged in kind, with the now-famous result featuring all manner of double meanings and inside jokes. ‘The woman's (possibly Jane Avril) contracted and shrinking attitude, suggesting that she is fleeing from the camera, is an ironic comment probably intended for Sescau, who ‘used his studio mainly for seduction’’ (Wagner, p. 26) The year 1895 was a prosperous creative period for Lautrec, who designed some of his most famous 'affiches' and painted his celebrated large canvas 'Au Moulin Rouge,' now in the Art Institute of Chicago—coincidentally, the painting features Paul Sescau as a subject.
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