French, 1864-1901.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s  career lasted just over a decade and coincided with two major developments in late nineteenth-century Paris: the birth of modern printmaking and the explosion of nightlife culture. He observed and documented with great psychological insight the personalities and facets of Parisian nightlife and the French world of entertainment in the 1890s. Lautrec’s posters promoted Montmartre entertainers as celebrities, and elevated the popular medium of the advertising lithograph to the realm of high art.