May Milton

23 1/4 x 31 1/8 in /
58.4 x 78.7 cm

Printed in five colors
Key stone print in olive-green, color stones in blue, red, yellow and black on one sheet of wove paper
Text May Milton designed by the artist

The five-color design, with the lettering restricted to the arched name ‘May Milton,' was printed by Ancourt, Paris, for the dancer's tour of the United States. It is one of Lautrec's boldest poster compositions. The motif was carefully worked out in a drawing in colored crayon, but the poster only became known in France in a slightly altered reproduction in Arsene Alexandre's magazine Le Rire of 3 August 1895. May Milton was an English dancer with a pale, serious face and strong chin who appeared at the Moulin Rouge wearing a white debutante's dress with puff sleeves. Mindful of her romantic liaison with the performer May Belfort, Lautrec printed the posters for the two women in complementary colors: red and green in one case, and blue and yellow in the other. The May Milton poster must still have been hanging in Picasso's studio on the Boulevard de Clichy in 1901, for in his Interior with Bather, it adorns the wall of the studio in the background.

References: Wittrock P17, Adriani 134