Partners in art – Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril

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A new show at the Courtauld explores an unusual relationship

 ‘Why have there been no great artists from the aristocracy?’ The art historian Linda Nochlin posed this question in her classic essay, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ In fact, she admits there was one: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec  (1864–1901), who she suggests was distanced from normal aristocratic life by his physical deformity. Instead of being taken up with social duties in high society, Toulouse-Lautrec’s days were spent amongst altogether lowlier people. And he was free to develop his unique body of work, some of which is now on show at London’s Courtauld Gallery.

Rather than attempting to survey the artist’s entire output, ‘Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge’ concentrates on his relationship with one particular model and muse, the dancer Jane Avril. The two developed a strong friendship and may have been lovers. They had both suffered physical illness in childhood. Toulouse-Lautrec’s legs were badly broken in a childhood accident and never grew properly thereafter, so his adult body was very oddly proportioned, a large torso on very short legs. Avril (née Jeanne Beaudon), had been abused as a child and ran away from home at the age of 13. She was committed to the Salpêtrière hospital with a nervous condition known as St Vitus’ Dance (now called Sydenham’s chorea). The chief symptom was uncontrollable, jerky movements of the legs.

They both self-mythologized to some degree. Toulouse-Lautrec exaggerated his physical imperfections in his self-portraits, while Jane Avril adopted her English stage name (rather exotic to a Parisian audience) and claimed that she had been cured of her teenage illness by dancing at a ball. The ball in question, at the Salpêtrière, was probably not held until after she had left the hospital. Artist and dancer came from opposite ends of the social spectrum, but plainly found a lot of common ground, and he painted her many times.

The Courtauld show displays a range of these paintings, together with some very well-preserved copies of Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters. So we have both intimate, private images of Avril and images that emphasize her public persona. She seems to have been regarded as sexy yet more refined than some of her contemporary performers such as La Goulue (literally ‘the glutton’), Grille d’Egout (‘sewer-grate’) and Nini Les-pattes-en-l’air (Nini Legs-in-the-air).

Avril seems to have promoted an image of herself as more intellectual than these contemporaries – the expression ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’ comes to mind. Toulouse-Lautrec designed the cover for a book of prints by various avant-garde artists, which shows Avril apparently surveying proofs straight from the master-printer’s press. She experimented with her personal attire, and her clothes were often admired although at times she was felt to have gone too far.

Avril’s dancing was said to be alternately smooth and flowing, and wild and jerky (described by a contemporary critic as ‘epileptic choreography’), the latter being captured in the posters La troupe de Mme Eglantine, where she appears at the far left, and Jardin de Paris, where she holds her dress so as not to show too much leg. The poster Divan Japonais shows the more refined, sophisticated side of her image – though here, even with her body completely covered apart from hands and face, she is still the object of lustful stares.

Toulouse-Lautrec was a master at conveying the image of the individual. In La Divan Japonais he not only shows an image of Avril that captures her angular body and flaming red hair, but also the singer Yvette Guilbert, who remains recognizable even though her head is missing. She had ceased to perform for La Divan Japonais and her face had to be left out to avoid legal repercussions. In At the Moulin Rouge, a major painting on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, Avril appears seated with Lautrec and a group of his friends. She is seen from behind, recognizable again from her red hair. In the background, with raised arms, is La Goulou, and at the right of the picture with ghostly green-white face, is another performer, May Milton. Here we see Avril as one of the intellectual group around the artist, rather than in the company of her fellow performers – no doubt the way she wished to be seen.

The Courtauld’s own Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge, Putting on her Gloves (1892) again shows her looking quietly dignified. By contrast, the poster Toulouse-Lautrec produced of her in a dress adorned with a snake design is highly sexualized – the snake is apparently wrapped around her body, its head on her chest gazing up at her face, while its tail seems to bend inward at her crotch. Avril’s career, performing on the stage at venues such as the Moulin Rouge and  Jardin de Paris, depended on her erotic appeal, on seeming both daring and risqué and yet on being a ‘cut above’ most of her contemporaries.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s fame and success as an artist depended on his being able to capture the after-hours world of Avril and her set, to convey the sexy glamour of their milieu. His sensitivity to Avril as a person, however, gives a depth to his paintings of her that allows us to see her as an individual as complex as he was himself.