Isselbacher Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1975

Memphis, Tennessee, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Toulouse-Lautrec: The Guardsmark Collection, September-October, 1989, no. 7, p. 24, illustrated in color p. 25  

Édouard Fournier commissioned Lautrec to create Divan Japonais for the Spring 1893 opening of his small cabaret in the Montmartre district of Paris, which had recently been decorated with lanterns and mock bamboo in the fashionable Japanese style. Although the poster includes Lautrec's first depiction of the singer Yvette Guilbert, who is recognizable due to her trademark black gloves, she is relegated to the upper left corner and shown only from the neck down. The audience rather than the performer take center stage in the composition and Lautrec’s inclusion of his friends, the celebrated actress, singer and dancer, Jane Avril, and the art critic Edouard Dujardin, as the center of the composition is not only an advertisement of the elevated style and mood of the cabaret but also an endorsement of Lautrec’s art itself.