HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901)


Tête d'homme à barbiche (Portrait de Henri Rochefort-Luçay) ink on paper17 x 28cm (6 11/16 x 11in).Executed circa 1894
|ProvenanceThadée Natanson Collection, Paris; his estate sale, 27 November 1953, lot 130.Anon. sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 3 December 1958, lot 34.Fritz Gross Collection, London, no. 358.Thence by descent to the present owner.ExhibitedIngelheim am Rhein, C. H. Boehringer Sohn, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Monotypien, Lithographien, Radierungen, Plakate, 4 May - 3 June 1968, no. 35.Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum, Impressionist and Modern, The art and collection of Fritz Gross, 14 August – 21 October 1990, no. 58.London, Hayward Gallery, Toulouse-Lautrec, 10 October 1991 - 19 January 1992, no. 60. LiteratureM. G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre, Vol. V, New York, 1971, no. D3.702 (illustrated p. 619).An aristocrat who repudiated his title, Henri Rochefort Luҫay was one of the most controversial political journalists and agitators of the Third Republic. He was a divisive figure who was repeatedly exiled and attained notoriety in the Dreyfus affair. With his wild hair and distinguished features, he became a popular subject for contemporary artists and caricaturists. Auguste Rodin produced a bust of Rochefort in the early 1880s while Édouard Manet exhibited a portrait of him in at the Salon of 1881.