La revue blanche

La revue blanche is a seminal color lithograph created in 1895 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901) and printed by Edward Ancourt et Cie. This advertising print exemplifies the explosion of commercial poster art in late 19th-century France. Toulouse-Lautrec mastered the challenging medium of color lithography, utilizing vibrant inks on tan wove paper to achieve the flat fields of color and bold contours characteristic of his distinctive graphic style.

The subject of the work is a promotional piece for the celebrated avant-garde Parisian journal, La revue blanche, which championed Symbolism, Impressionism, and various modernist movements of the era. The publication served as a cultural nexus for writers and visual artists, and Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent contributor and astute chronicler of Belle Époque society. The artist's distinctive approach to the poster elevated the form from mere mass-produced advertisement to high art.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s dynamic composition and striking graphic qualities in works such as La revue blanche solidified his reputation as the preeminent master of the affiche (poster) in Paris. This specific impression, classified simply as a print, offers invaluable insight into the ephemeral yet influential nature of graphic art from the fin-de-siècle period. This important piece resides in the renowned prints and drawings collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. While the original physical work is carefully preserved by the museum, high-resolution images of many of Toulouse-Lautrec’s popular designs are frequently digitized and available today through public domain archives.