In the Limelight: Toulouse-Lautrec Portraits from the Herakleidon Museum

Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut

September 23, 2017 - January 7, 2018

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec enjoyed the spectacle, the night life, and the tawdry side of Belle Époque Paris. Best known for his art portraying the café-concert and the entertainers who performed there, this exhibition explores how Toulouse-Lautrec used portraiture to comment on the absurdity and excess of Bohemian life in Paris at the turn of the century. The show examines the relationship between portraiture, caricature, and rise of the cult of celebrity in the late 19th century, while focusing on the artist’s portraits of entertainers who became icons of the Parisian nightlife.

Featuring 100 drawings, prints, and posters, the exhibition showcases the artist’s satirical portraits of stage personalities like Sarah Bernhardt, Jane Avril, and Arstide Bruant alongside those of his friends and family.

In the Limelight: Toulouse-Lautrec Portraits from the Herakleidon Museum, a single source exhibition provided by PAN Art Connections Inc. www.pan-art-connections.com, is organized by the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. The works are on loan from the collection of Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece (www.herakleidon-art.gr).


The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, featuring a scholarly essay by the curator Mia Laufer, PhD candidate (Washington University in Saint Louis) and former Zvi Grunberg Resident Fellow at the Bruce Museum (2015-2016), acknowledgments by Peter C. Sutton, The Susan E. Lynch Executive Director of the Bruce Museum, and a foreword by Paul Firos, founder of the Herakleidon Museum.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901)
Au Concert, 1896
 Color lithograph
© Copyright Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
La Revue Blanche, 1895. ,
color lithograph.
© Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece, courtesy PAN Art Connections, Inc.