The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Cambridge (Mass) runs until July 21st 2002 an exhibition that brings together six portrait paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec for the first time. “Three Women: Early Portraits by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec” offers a view of Toulouse-Lautrec's earliest work while encouraging an examination of the artist's innovative approach to portraiture and an investigation of the roles of women in the Paris art world of the 1880s.
“We are pleased to organize this focused exhibition of early portraits by Toulouse-Lautrec within the intimate setting of the Fogg Art Museum galleries,” said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot, Director of the Harvard University Art Museums.
“It is this intimate environment, combined with an art historical approach to exhibition development, that provides our audiences with a unique and enjoyable viewing experience”, they added.
These paintings are the first mature works of Toulouse-Lautrec's career. All were finished before his first commercial success, the Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 that catapulted the artist into the public eye and determined the direction of his career. This gathering of early portraits offers a chance to see these works together for the first time since they were created in his studio.
Portraits were among the first, and the last, works Toulouse-Lautrec made during his brief life, said Sarah B. Kianovsky, assistant curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Fogg Art Museum. This exhibition affords the visitor the opportunity to experience these small, intimate portraits not as footnotes to a career, but as an important facet of the artist's oeuvre.
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