Jane Avril
Medium
Color lithograph on tan wove paper
Dimensions
Image, incl. stray marks: 55.6 × 30.9 cm (21 15/16 × 12 3/16 in.); Sheet: 55.6 × 37.6 cm (21 15/16 × 14 13/16 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
67181
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This poster was Lautrec’s last image of Avril. With her arms raised in a playful surrender, the dancer yields to an appliquéd snake, whose coils wrap around her slender black dress. Her twisted body might seem exaggerated, but it could have been prompted by Avril’s performances. As the poet Arthur Symons recalled, “She was so thin and supple that she could turn over backward…until she brushed the floor with her shoulders.”
About the Artist
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1864–1901
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa (1864-1901) was a French Post-Impressionist painter, printmaker, and illustrator whose innovative poster designs revolutionized graphic art and advertising in late 19th-century Paris. Born into an aristocratic family at Albi in southern France, Toulouse-Lautrec's privileged lineage traced back to the Counts of Toulouse and extended uninterrupted to th...