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Yvette Guilbert taking a curtain call

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec • Painting, 1894, 41.6×22.9 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Portrait, Genre scene
Style of art: Impressionism
Technique: Watercolor, Chalk
Materials: Paper
Date of creation: 1894
Size: 41.6×22.9 cm
Artwork in selections: 11 selections

Description of the artwork «Yvette Guilbert taking a curtain call»

Yvette Guilbert’s songs would probably be banned today. She sang about the sweetness of morphine flowing through her veins. She sang about how strong are virgins, just as unripe apricots. But in the 1890s, they literally went crazy over her. The spectators reserved their seats in the Ambassador café even during the day, and came to Yvette’s performance in the evening, indifferently skipping cancans in coloured stockings and other seductive amusements. In 1898, the Russian journalist and theatre critic Vlas Doroshevich came to Paris to listen to Yvette Guilbert, because she had remained the unchanged favourite of Parisians for 8 years. “Not a single ministry lasted so long in Paris!” Doroshevich joked. A few minutes were enough for him to feel the power of her voice and her look, to forget how colourless and unattractive she was, how unsuitable was this woman for her fame:

She is not beauitiful, but when she sings, you understand the French expression ‘Mieux que belle!’ (better than beautiful). Her whole face comes to life, and you are ready to vow that you have never seen anything more beautiful in your life than this woman with laughing eyes and a thin, slightly mocking smile.
(…) Your thoughts wandered through the attics, basements and mezzanines, about which Guilbert sang. You smiled or became sad after the wish of this singing sorceress. She sang about a big house, where a gorgeous cocotte lived in the mezzanine and fooled her rich and stupid admirers, and where a mother convulsively hugged her dying son to her in a dirty, damp, cold basement: he was dying because she had no money for medicine. And when she sang about this mother and this child, and about this medicine she had no money for, her singing was like a moan, like the cries of a suffering heart. And you heard the voice of this mother.
Tears gleamed in the women’s eyes, and the sinful hall filled with holy diamonds. You felt choked up with tears and at the same time... you could not help laughing, because Yvette was already singing about the attic of the same house, about the little mansard where the poor poet lived, who received a visitor, a laughing laundress, who came to spend merrily the hungry evening in the moonlight.
It all happened within two minutes! Was it really only two minutes?”

Of course, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was shocked and fascinated by this star. Parisians began to reserve seats in broad daylight even earlier than her concerts in order to get there late in the evening. But being in Lautrec’s field of vision and at the sight of his merciless pencil is not an adventure for the weak. His idea of attractiveness is very peculiar and can be a real test for a fine lady, especially a woman seeking attention and fame. But we remember that Guilbert was not attractive, therefore any attempts to attract the viewer with an impressive appearance, replicated in posters, could pass for a lie or for forced flattery. Yvette Guilbert did not like neither. Toulouse-Lautrec was successful to get within her sight and offered her, at first glance, a completely unprofitable path — on his posters, Guilbert would not be beautiful, she would be better than beautiful.

Written by Anna Sidelnikova



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