Reine de Joie (Two Color Trial Proof)

1892

36 3/4 x 53 1/2 in /
91.4 x 134.6 cm

Trial proof
Two of four color stones used, without olive-green key stone
Printed by Ancourt on wove paper
Commissioned by Victor Joze
25 in public collections
UNIQUE

The poster advertising Victor Joze's book Reine de Joie/Moeurs du Demi-Monde (Queen of Joy, or, The World of Easy Virtue) must have appeared at about the same time as the two Bruant posters. Joze, a hack Polish writer or low-quality erotic novels and a friend of Lautrec, who designed two more lithographs for him in later years, had commissioned this color poster. On June 4, 1892, the erotic periodical Le Fin de Siecle, wherein Joze was an editor, reported the appearance of the highly individual composition, which was then also used at a reduced size as the title page for Joze's book.

The poster and the anti-Semitic leaflet published by Henry Julien in the series La Menagerie Sociale caused a scandal. The episode shown here is one in which the heroine of the novel, Helene Roland, kisses the corpulent Olizac on the nose at a table laid for a meal-Lautrec actually drew Georges Lasserre for the figure on the left, with Luzarche d'Azay on the right. At the insistence of Baron Rothschild, who believed the main character in the novel, a Baron Rosenfeld, to be modeled on himself, attempts were made to suppress the entire edition. This did not, however, prevent the publishers of Fin de Siecle from selling part of it, the poster also being mentioned in En Dehors on 10 July 1892.

References: Wittrcok P3, Adriani 5, Frey 304