Le Café-concert: Edmée Lescot, created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1893, is a seminal example of the color lithographic prints that defined his career. This piece captures the raw, candid world of the Parisian café-concert and cabaret culture during the late 19th century in France. Toulouse-Lautrec was instrumental in elevating the medium of lithography from commercial advertisement to fine art, utilizing bold outlines and flat areas of color to evoke immediate personality and energy.
The subject, Edmée Lescot, was a well-known contemporary performer, and Toulouse-Lautrec portrays her with characteristic immediacy and lack of sentimentality. Unlike traditional portraiture, the artist focuses on the fleeting, often distorted, moment of performance under harsh stage lights. The simplicity of form and the dramatic use of contour lines common in his prints emphasize both the intensity and the artificiality inherent in the performance venues he frequented.
As a documentarian of the Belle Époque and a master printmaker, Toulouse-Lautrec’s influential body of work remains highly sought after by institutions globally. This specific impression of Le Café-concert: Edmée Lescot is part of the distinguished permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, representing the pinnacle of French fin-de-siècle graphic arts. Due to the work's historical importance, high-resolution copies of these defining prints are frequently made available through public domain initiatives for educational study and wider appreciation.
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