Portrait Bust of Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender

Portrait Bust of Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender is a celebrated graphic print created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1895, capturing the vibrant persona of the popular actress and dancer Marcelle Lender. Lender, known for her spirited performances in operettas and stage comedies, was a prominent figure in the Parisian entertainment world, which Toulouse-Lautrec relentlessly documented in his work focused on women and theatrical life.

The piece is technically classified as a print: a complex crayon, brush, and spatter lithograph executed in eight distinct colors on wove paper. The use of this extensive palette was highly innovative for graphic arts of the period, demonstrating Toulouse-Lautrec’s ambition to elevate commercial posters to fine art. He utilized the lithographic process not just for reproduction, but as a primary medium for textural experimentation, visible in the varied application of crayon and spatter techniques that lend the portrait a painterly quality. This specific impression represents the fourth and final state of the work, published as part of the 1895 Pan magazine edition.

Toulouse-Lautrec often focused his gaze on the public personas of performers, and his likenesses of Lender are among his most recognizable works. This depiction emphasizes her famed stage presence and the dramatic tilt of her head. Today, high-resolution images of these influential nineteenth-century prints are frequently made available for scholarly study through public domain initiatives. This significant impression of Portrait Bust of Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender resides in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.