“Reine de Joie”
“Reine de Joie” is a color lithograph printed on paper by the French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, from 1892. “Reine de Joie”, which translates to “Queen of Joy” was an avant-garde poster made to promote a novel of the same name by the French author, Victor Joze.
In this poster, a woman wearing a red dress and black choker sits on the lap of an older man and gives him a kiss. Her bare legs are visible on the lap of the gentleman. Her black hair, red lips, and the mole on her cheek stand out starkly against her pale skin. The gentleman is much older than the woman. He is heavyset, with a balding head, and is formally dressed. He kisses her back.
The man is seated in a wooden chair in front of a long table topped with plates, utensils, cups, and an ewer of white wine. A gentleman is seated to his left with bright red hair and mustache, looking off to his left. The image is flat without elements of shading. With the bold lines and strong colors, it shows the influence of the Japanese art prints, which were highly popular at the time.
In the book, Reine de Joie: Moeurs du Demi-Monde (Queen of Joy: The World of Easy Virtue), Joze tells the story of a young woman, Alice Lamy. Lamy is the fictional protagonist of the novel and was a member of Parisian high society. In the story, she convinces a rich Jewish banker, Baron de Rosenfeld, to pay her to be his companion. He agrees to pay her 50,000 francs a month, in addition to other gifts. The title of the book is a French reference that implies a prostitute. The story narrates the improprieties of high society in an eroticized way.
After its publication, the book was seen by many to be antisemitic. The character of the older gentleman and even his name was quickly recognized as a caricature of the French Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. In response, the Baron and his friends tore down many copies of this poster, an advertisement that was hung on the walls of bookstores throughout Paris. The book and poster art came out during a tense time of French history, with the Dreyfus Affair about to erupt just two years later in 1894. Many artists took sides during the scandal, which lasted until 1906.
There are multiple institutions that have copies of the original 1892 lithograph print of “Reine de Joie“. Some places include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. There are also copies in private collections worldwide.
For more on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
