Cycle Michael
Medium
Brush lithograph in olive green on tan wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 83.5 × 115 cm (32 7/8 × 45 5/16 in.); Sheet, sight: 88 × 126.5 cm (34 11/16 × 49 13/16 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
67203
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Lautrec was an enthusiastic fan of sporting events, emphasizing the late 19th-century French bicycling fervor in two posters (see 2015.278). Both were meant to advertise a new bicycle part to a ready audience of some half-million riders. However, the artist’s subtle preliminary version seen here was rejected, and the lithograph was never produced in more than one color. Instead Lautrec personally funded an edition of 200 monochrome impressions.
About the Artist
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1864–1901
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa (1864-1901) was a French Post-Impressionist painter, printmaker, and illustrator whose innovative poster designs revolutionized graphic art and advertising in late 19th-century Paris. Born into an aristocratic family at Albi in southern France, Toulouse-Lautrec's privileged lineage traced back to the Counts of Toulouse and extended uninterrupted to th...