| Artist |
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Marie |
The well-fleshed La Goulue (The Glutton”, in Montmartre argot) was a celebrated star of the dance hall and the archetype of the Naughty Nineties Beef Trust Girl. With his acute theatrical sense, Lautrec felt related to figures of temperament and loved painting them - whether they happened to be public entertainers, great surgeons in the operating theater, or circus acrobats. He presents La Goulue ironically as a bizarre hussy but gives her a certain insolent grandeur. His more spectacular portraits like this one - all fine nerve and cold fire – have a way of summoning up the portraiture of Goya and El Greco. |
