Oscar Wilde and Romain Coolus—Program for Raphaël and Salomé
Medium
Lithograph on tan wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 30.3 × 49.1 cm (11 15/16 × 19 3/8 in.); Sheet: 32.9 × 49.8 cm (13 × 19 5/8 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
72443
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The consummate French actress Sarah Bernhardt was slated to play the tragic lead in the premiere of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in London in 1892, but legal issues shuttered that production. It eventually appeared in its original French in Paris in 1896, while Wilde was in prison for gross indecency. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s program for a double bill of Salomé and Raphaël, by the French playwright Romain Coolus, includes cast lists as well as portraits of the two authors.
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...