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A man and two women standing near a bar nearly fill this vertical painting. Though made with oil on cardboard, the paint is applied in thin strokes, so parts of the painting look more like a drawing, and the tan of the cardboard is visible in many areas. Shown from the thighs up at the center of the composition, the man stands with his back to us, looking away from us to our left, almost in profile. The camel-brown of the cardboard acts as the color of his jacket and the skin of his face, which are otherwise delineated with cobalt-blue and violet-purple lines. He wears a dark bowler hat, and a white cigarette dangles in his lips. A few scribbled black lines could suggest a mustache. Hands thrust into his pockets, he looks down at the bar, which a runs along left edge of the composition. Squeezed between the man and the glasses on the bar, a woman wearing a teal-blue feather boa leans one elbow on the bar and looks back at the man from the corners of her eyes. Her skin is rose-pink and she has curly red hair. Her arched, thin eyebrows and snub nose are set in a round face with a double chin, and her crimson-red lips are pursed. She wears a ruby-red dress or coat and a turquoise-blue, wide-brimmed hat with bubblegum-pink ribbons or feathers. Two small, stemmed glasses sit on the bar in front of the man and woman. Behind the bar, along the left edge of the painting, a man wears a dark vest over a shirt with sky-blue sleeves. A light cloth lies over the shoulder closer to us and he has dark hair. The rest of his features are lost behind the woman’s hat. To our right, beyond the man’s shoulder, a woman stands with her body facing us as she tips back and looks off to our right. She wears a long, black tie over a pale blue, high-necked shirt. One hand is tucked into a pocket on the front of her jacket, which is streaked with mint green over the brown cardboard. Loosely painted vertical stripes below her waist suggests she wears a skirt, indicating this is a woman, though it might otherwise be difficult to tell. She wears a low, royal-blue cap with an emerald-green feather curling up from the back over a cloud of yellow hair. Only the gray bowler hat, ruddy skin around the ear, and a teal-green jacket of a fifth person are visible between that woman and the right edge of the composition. The wall at the back of the space is tan with shell-pink streaks, and a sign with a red triangle against a turquoise background is cropped by the right edge of the painting. The scene is sketchily painted so features are outlined with blue or brown and filled in with streaks of pale color. The artist inscribed the painting in the lower right corner, “pour Metenier d'apres son Alfred la Guigne HTLautrec,” with the HTL overlapping to create a monogram.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Alfred la Guigne, 1894

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 80

Medium

oil on cardboard

Dimensions

overall: 65.6 x 50.4 cm (25 13/16 x 19 13/16 in.)

framed: 91.4 x 76.2 cm (36 x 30 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1963.10.220

Artists / Makers

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (artist) French, 1864 - 1901

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower right: pour Metenier / d'apres [sic] / son Alfred la Guigne / HTLautrec (HTL in ligature)

Provenance

Oscar Méténier [1859-1913], Paris, in 1894.[1] Louis Bernard, in 1914.[2] Pierre Decourcelle [1856-1926], Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16 June 1926, no. 77); purchased by (Galerie Joseph Allard, Paris) for Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York;[3] bequest 1963 to NGA.

[1] The painting was lent by Méténier to the 1894 Salon des Indépendants.

[2] Bernard lent the painting to a 1914 Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at Galerie Manzi-Joyant.

[3] Letter, J. Allard to Mrs. Chester Dale, 9 October 1928, copy in NGA curatorial files; and annotated copy of the 1926 sale catalogue in the NGA Library.

Associated Names

Bernard, Louis
Dale, Chester
Decourcelle, Pierre
Drouot, Hôtel
Galerie Joseph Allard
Méténier, Oscar

Exhibition History

1894: Salon des Indépendants, Palais des Arts Libéraux, Paris, 1894, no. 789.

1914: Exposition Rétrospective de l'Oeuvre de H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 1914, no. 50.

1928: Loan Exhibition of Modern French Art from the Chester Dale Collection for the Benefit of the French Hospital of New York, Wildenstein Galleries, 1928, no. 37.

1931: Degas and his Tradition, Museum of French Art, New York, 1931, no. 31.

1965: The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

1994: Toulouse-Lautrec: Marcelle Lender in "Chilpéric", National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994-1995, not in brochure.

Bibliography

1929: Dale, Maud. Before Manet to Modigliani from the Chester Dale Collection. New York, 1929: no. 52, repro.

1942: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 79, repro.

1944: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 79, repro.

1944: Jewell, Edward Alden. French Impressionists and their Contemporaries Represented in American Collections. New York, 1944: repro. 177.

1953: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 90, repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 327, repro.

1965: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 133, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 132.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 118, repro.

1971: Dortu, M.G. Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre. 6 vols. New York, 1971:III:P516, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 350, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 529, no. 793, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 402, repro.