Le crocodile, Menu
Medium
Lithograph on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 32.3 × 22.3 cm (12 3/4 × 8 13/16 in.); Sheet: 56.1 × 38.2 cm (22 1/8 × 15 1/16 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
35783
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In November 1896 Lautrec visited Château de Blois with friends, where they discussed Marie de Medici, the 17th-century French queen who was exiled to Blois by her son Louis XIII before later making a daring night escape. This tale inspired Lautrec’s menu, in which his friends masquerade as Marie and her rescuer. A puzzling crocodile and a bespectacled ghostly apparition also appear, only heightening the scene’s mystery. In a rare act of self-portraiture, Lautrec observes from below.
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...