Paul Rosenberg, Paris
Jacques Helft, Paris
Antonio Santamarina, Buenos Aires (acquired before 1926)

London, The Goupil Gallery, Portraits and Other Works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1898, no. 22 or 57  
Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Escuela francesca siglos XIX y XX, 1933, no. 116
Buenos Aires, Galeria Viau, Degas-Lautrec, 1950, no. 22 (with incorrect dimensions)
Buenos Aires, Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1964, 1964, no. 3, illustrated in the catalogue
Chicago, The Art Institute, Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, 1979, no. 84,  illustrated in the catalogue
New York, Wildenstein & Co., Women in Art, 1995-96, no. 20
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Toulouse-Lautrec. Das Gesamte Graphische Werk, Bildstudien und Gemälde, 2005, no. XX, illustrated in color in the catalogue

M.G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre, vol. III, New York, 1971, no. P.640, illustrated p. 391

In very good condition on a stable panel. Under UV no apparent inpainting.
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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec studied under award-winning Academic painters of the nineteenth century, but was decidedly convinced that the finest art was not based on the formal pillars of Academy training. Instead, as Toulouse-Lautrec himself said, “I have tried to draw something real, not something ideal” (Charles F. Stuckey, Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, The Art Institute, Chicago, 1979, p. 18). Best known for painting the demi-monde of Paris at such scintillating locales as the cabarets of Montmartre, Lautrec’s repertoire demonstrates his ability to evoke the real and raw emotions of his subjects.

The present work depicts Béatrice Taipé de Céleyran, the artist’s first cousin and goddaughter, and is one of two portraits he painted of her during a family visit in 1897. Unlike his second portrait of Béatrice in which she is seated in a garden and painted from behind her right shoulder (fig. 1), this version shows her in a three-quarter profile at bust length in a non-descript interior. The composition of the portrait and Toulouse-Lautrec’s direct, intimate observation of Béatrice recall the fifteenth-century Netherlandish portraits he frequently studied (ibid., p. 267). 

Despite the traditional structure of his composition, Toulouse-Lautrec’s depiction of her is candid. In his endeavor to answer Charles Baudelaire’s call to paint the modern life, he sought to evoke the emotions unde🐭rlying the human experience. Here, through the loose brushstrokes composing her dress and the soft pink and blue overtones, he removes the formality implied in her pose and creates an honest and endearing rendering of his beloved cousin.