Elles (poster for 1896 exhibition at La Plume)

Elles (poster for 1896 exhibition at La Plume) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is a powerful example of the artist's immersion in fin-de-siècle Parisian nightlife and his mastery of printmaking as a commercial art form. Created in 1896, this work is classified as a print, specifically a crayon, brush, and spatter lithograph, executed using four colors on beige wove paper. This particular impression is the third and final state, issued specifically as a poster edition to advertise the exhibition of the complete Elles portfolio at the influential magazine La Plume.

The larger Elles series focused on intimate, often unglamorous depictions of women residing in Parisian brothels, or maisons closes. Toulouse-Lautrec lived within these environments for extended periods, capturing moments of quiet domesticity, exhaustion, and solitude rather than conventional eroticism. His compositions provide insight into the daily lives of these working women, a subject rarely treated with such empathy and candor by his contemporaries.

Toulouse-Lautrec utilized the lithographic process to achieve a distinctive aesthetic marked by expressive line work, vibrant flat color, and textured effects like spatter. As a highly successful commercial poster, this print cemented Toulouse-Lautrec’s reputation as one of the period’s most significant graphic artists. The directness and compositional ingenuity of the Elles series reflect his dedication to journalistic observation and innovative technique. This historic piece resides in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and due to the wide reproduction of the artist’s commercial output, many of these iconic prints are now frequently associated with public domain collections.