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At the Café La Mie

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
about 1891

Medium/Technique oil paint on millboard mounted on panel
Dimensions 53 x 67.9 cm (20 7/8 x 26 3/4 in.)
Credit Line S. A. Denio Collection—Sylvanus Adams Denio Fund and General Income
Accession Number40.748
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Lautrec based this painting on a staged photograph in which his friend Maurice Guibert played the role of a sleazy low-life type in the company of an unidentified woman. The practice of deriving paintings from photographs was one that Lautrec embraced starting in the 1880s. The painting’s title comes from "Un miché à la mie," 19th-century slang for a client who neglects to pay a prostitute for her services. Might this play on words have a bearing on the enigmatic relationship between these two figures?

InscriptionsUpper right: TLautrec
ProvenanceBy 1902, Maurice Guibert (b. 1856 – d. 1913), Paris [see note 1]. Gustav Pellet (b. 1859 - d. 1919), Paris. Gaston-Alexandre Camentron (dealer; b. 1862 – d. 1919), Paris [see note 2]. By 1917, Josse Bernheim-Jeune (dealer; b. 1870 – d. 1941) and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune (dealer; b. 1870 – d. 1953), Paris [see note 3]; 1929, sold by Josse Bernheim-Jeune and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune to Alex Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd., Glasgow and London, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York (stock no. A611); 1929, half share sold by M. Knoedler & Co. to Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd.; 1929, sold by Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd. to David W. T. Cargill (b. 1872 - d. 1939), Glasgow [see note 4]; about 1939/1940, probably sold through Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd., to Bignou Gallery, New York [see note 5]; 1940, sold by Bignou Gallery to the MFA for $24,000. (Accession Date: November 14, 1940)

NOTES:
[1] Maurice Guibert lent the painting to the exhibition, Exposition de Toulouse-Lautrec (Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 14-31, 1902), cat. no. 102.

[2] The Gustav Pellet and Gaston-Alexandre Camentron provenance is according to the catalogue for the exhibition Masterpieces by Nineteenth Century French Painters (Alex Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd., London, June, 1929), cat. no. 9.

[3] The painting was lent from the Bernheim-Jeune collection to the exhibition Französische Kunst. des XIX. u. XX. Jahrhunderts (Kunsthaus, Zurich, October 5-November 14, 1917), cat. no. 242.

[4] Francis Fowle, "Post-Impressionism in Scotland," in Impressionism in Scotland (exh. cat., National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2008), p. 90.

[5] When Cargill died in 1939 part of his collection was dispersed in London and New York; see Francis Fowle, "West Scotland Collectors of Nineteenth-Century French Art," in Millet to Matisse: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Painting from Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, by Vivien Hamilton et al. (New Haven and London, 2002), p. 48. The painting seems likely at that time to have been sold to Alex Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd. Bignou Gallery and Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd. were closely associated and shared a stock of paintings.