1896
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Elles: The Seated Clown, Mlle Cha-u-Ka-o is a 1896 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a red-and-black clown suit sits on a chair, one leg crossed over the other. Her face is pale, her eyes tired. She looks straight at you. Lautrec painted this in a Paris brothel, not for shock value, but because he liked these women. Most artists showed prostitutes as either glamorous or tragic—he showed them as people, just sitting there. The series flopped at first; buyers wanted titillation, not quiet moments. Look up other works in the *subject: france, 19th century*.
The French publisher Gustave Pellet, hoping to attract new customers, persuaded Lautrec to make a series of ten prints, plus frontispiece and cover, depicting brothels. Although it was not unusual to see prostitutes pictured in the popular press, Lautrec was the first well-known, successful artist to tackle this subject. The set was a commercial failure when it first appeared, perhaps because the scenes are not erotic. Lautrec had said that "they are women to my liking", and between 1892 and 1895 he often lived in various Parisian brothels for weeks at a time. This allowed him to witness the…
This print belongs to a portfolio published by the dealer Gustave Pellet, who created a special luxury paper that featured a watermark of his initials.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), known as Toulouse-Lautrec (French: ), was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator.
See the richer artist page
