Reine de Joie
Medium
Color lithograph on tan wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 136.2 × 93 cm (53 5/8 × 36 5/8 in.); Sheets as pieced, sight: 143.8 × 99 cm (56 5/8 × 39 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
88629
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This colorful poster publicized French author Victor Joze’s controversial novel Reine de joie (Queen of joy), which follows a young courtesan in Paris who convinces the wealthy Jewish banker Baron de Rosenfeld to compensate her with his money in exchange for her company. The fictional Rosenfeld was loosely based on the real Baron de Rothschild, andJoze played up anti-Semitic stereotypes of the 1890s that characterized Jewish bankers as greedy, dishonest, and unrefined. The book and poster inspir...
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...