Reine de Joie
1892 · Colour lithograph (poster) · Boston Public Library
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About this work
- Artist
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
- Year
- 1892
- Medium
- Colour lithograph (poster)
- Original size
- 149.5 × 99 cm
- Collection
- Boston Public Library (Print Department)
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
A courtesan in a red dress leans across a dinner table to kiss the bald head of a fat banker, while a young man in a top hat looks on from the right. Toulouse-Lautrec designed the poster in 1892 for Victor Joze's novel Reine de joie, moeurs du demi-monde, a satirical book about a kept woman and her financier, and the image was pasted up across Paris to advertise it. The flattened figures, the bold red, green and yellow and the empty foreground owe much to Japanese prints; the banker was taken as a caricature of the Rothschilds, and the poster caused a small scandal. It is one of the most sought-after of his thirty-odd posters. The impression reproduced is in the Boston Public Library.
This full-bleed edition prints the work edge to edge from a high-resolution scan of the original, very slightly cropped (a few percent at most) to fit the sheet. The gallery edition shows the whole work, uncropped. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Red, yellow and green planes with a comic kiss at the centre, for a dining room, bar area or hallway at 16×24 or 24×36 in thin black, no mat. It wants a plain white or dark green wall and pairs with Divan Japonais.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Post-Impressionism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1892)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Mood
- decorative, sophisticated
- Rooms
- dining room, hallway or entryway, living room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 16×24. Prints at 12×18, 16×24, 24×36 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway; 24×36 as the statement piece above a sofa or bed.
Framing. Printed edge to edge: a slim black or dark wood frame right to the image, or let the canvas wrap do the framing. Also available gallery-wrapped on canvas, ready to hang with no frame.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is Reine de Joie in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was Reine de Joie painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
