Fogg Lands Toulouse-Lautrec Show

The Fogg Art Museum will unveil a rare exhibition this Saturday of the earliest works by French turn-of-the century painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec—including works on loan from some of the world’s most renowned art museums.

Entitled “Three Women,” the show will display six paintings that have never before been shown in the same museum exhibit. The show will also be one of the first to highlight the artist’s early works—completed before he burst onto the Parisian art scene in 1891 with his print of the Moulin Rouge.

“This is an unprecedented instillation of early, early portraits of women in his circle that has not hung together since the time they were in his studio,” said Sarah B. Kianovsky, exhibit curator and assistant curator of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts for the Fogg.

The show is anchored around the Fogg’s own Toulouse-Lautrec, The Hangover (Suzanne Valadon) (1887-1889) but relies on loans from museums including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Since the artist is better-known for his prints depicting the decadent and flamboyant Parisian cabaret scene, any paintings—particularly portraits—represent a side of Toulouse-Lautrec not well-known by the general public. The three different women featured in the exhibit were only recently identified as portraits of specific individuals and were all painted before 1890.

“He’s a great graphic artist but one of his best and most interesting paintings is in the Wertheim [Fogg] Collection,” said Henri T. Zerner, professor of history of art and architecture and curator in the Harvard University Art Museums.

According to Kianovsky, having an important work like The Hangover within the Fogg helped inspire the museum’s curatorial staff to spend nearly four years securing Toulouse-Lautrec’s other portraits for the exhibit.

“The other paintings don’t travel often and we’ve had some generous loans,” Kianovsky said.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s work is often seen in large museums within exhibits of other post-impressionist art, but the Fogg’s presentation adds a particular socio-historical context to the painter’s earliest efforts.

“This is a certain meditation on the role of women and an illustration of their contemporary social concerns in Paris,” Kianovsky said.

As a University museum, the Fogg is not dependent on admission tickets to fund its projects and can change the emphasis of its exhibits to be more academically oriented, Kianovsky said.

“Three Women” in particular, is oriented around text materials intended to be read prior to viewing the works.

The museum’s curatorial staff said the Fogg’s small space will prompt a more in-depth experience with Toulouse-Lautrec’s work.

“This intimate environment combined with an art historical approach to exhibition provides our audiences with a unique viewing experience,” James Cuno, professor of the history of art and architecture and Cabot director of the Harvard University Art Museums, said in an press release Tuesday.

—Staff writer Nicole B. Usher can be reached at usher@fas.harvard.edu.