Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"

Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lautrec sketched anarchist critic Félix Fénéon striking a dramatic pose with arms outstretched atop an ornamental platform with an elephant-shaped base. This was Lautrec’s preliminary design for the playbill to Victor Barrucand’s adaptation of the fourth-century Sanskrit love story "Le Chariot de terre cuite" (The Little Clay Cart). Lautrec also designed the sets for the fifth act. Fénéon had a bit part reading the prologue in the production, which opened Jan 22, 1895 at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre in Paris. Lautrec dedicated and offered the drawing to Fénéon.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"Preliminary Design for the Playbill to "Le Chariot de Terre Cuite"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.