Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French, 1864–1901

The matchless performer of sophisticated, often bawdy French cabaret songs, Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944) was one of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite subjects. His caricature-like images focused on (and exaggerated) her plain but dramatic features: her thinness, long neck, dark eye shadow and rouged lips, and distinctive profile. Her trademark long black gloves and simple satin dress with plunging front-and-back v-neck set Guilbert apart from her fellow café-concert singers with their jewels and tightly corseted hour-glass figures. Guilbert’s signature style marked her, as one contemporary commentator put it, as “the very latest thing up-to-date in Paris…”

Lautrec’s images for the album Yvette Guilbert broke new ground in book production by encroaching on the text rather than remaining confined within borders. Yvette Guilbert is one of more than 1,400 artist illustrated books given to the Museum by eminent collectors Molly and Walter Bareiss.

Text by Gustave Geffroy, French, 1856–1926
Published by L'estampe originale, Paris
Lithographs, 1894
Gift of Molly and Walter Bareiss, 1984.1135