Le Pendu (Premiere Planche), with complete text

1892

90 1/2 x 123 1/5 in /
229.9 x 312.9 cm

Key stone printed in black, color stone in grey olive-green
On one sheet of beige wove paper
Mounted on sheet with text LE 16 AVRIL/LA DEPECHE/COMMENVERA...in upper left corner of sheet
Only one known impression
Printed by R. Thomas & Co., Toulouse
Commissioned by the newspaper La Depeche, Toulouse
ONLY KNOWN COPY

Arthur Huc, art-lover and editor of the magazine La Depeche de Toulouse, used this lithograph, which was printed by the firm of Cassan Fils in Toulouse, together with the lettered poster (in yellow ochre, red and black, made by R. Thomas & Co., Toulouse) to advertise the serial novel Les Drames de Toulouse by A. Siegel. The first state of the lithograph probably dates either from the autumn of 1891-for Lautrec says in a letter of October 1891 in connection with the hanging of the Moulin Rouge poster that he was starting work on a new one-or the spring of 1892, before publication of the novel on 16 April. The novel is set in the eighteenth century, based on the real-life Calas affair made famous by Voltaire. In it, a father is tortured to death for not confessing to his son's murder-in fact, a suicide. The notoriety of the case was based on the anti-Protestant bias of the trial, which condemned the father by arguing that he had murdered his son to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. To match the text, the artist has used a dramatic style of drawing with rich contrasts that also occurs in some of his later lithographs.

References: Wittrock P2, Adriani 2, Frey 301