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Reine de Joie

Poster
c. 1892 (Designed and made)
Artist/Maker
Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec (artist)
Place of origin
Paris (Made)

This poster advertises the publication of Victor Joze's novel, Reine de Joie: Moeurs du demi-monde, an eroticised account of the improprieties of a section of Parisian society. The protagonist, Alice Lamy, is depicted embracing her elderly patron. The artfully styled lock of hair, the beauty spot and her revealing red dress all point to Alice's louche behaviour and the submissiveness in her patron's gesture suggests she has ensnared him completely. The title, Reine de Joie, is a thinly veiled reference to a French term for a prostitute: une fille de joie. The critic, Thadée Natanson, described Toulouse-Lautrec's poster thus,

'It is the latest [poster], above all, that has thrilled us: the delicious Reine de Joie, light, pretty and exquisitely perverse.'.


Object details

Categories
Prints
Posters
Object type
Poster
TitleReine de Joie (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Colour lithograph
Paper
Lithographic Ink
Colour Lithograph
Planographic Printing
Brief description
Poster, 'Reine de Joie' by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. French, 1892.
Physical description
Two men and a woman are seated at a dining table on which are laid cutlery, a plate, wine and water glasses and a ewer. The woman, dressed in a red dress and black choker, embraces the portly, elderly man to her right while the other glances off in the opposite direction.
Dimensions
  • Height: 1950mm
  • Width: 1225mm
Style
Post-Impressionist
Marks and inscriptions
  • H. T. Lautrec (Signed centre left)
  • Reine de Joie par Victor Joze chez tous les libraires (sic)
    Translation
    Queen of Joy by Victor Joze In all bookshops.
Subjects depicted
Prostitution
Chair
Dinner Plate
Ewer
Cutlery
Summary
This poster advertises the publication of Victor Joze's novel, Reine de Joie: Moeurs du demi-monde, an eroticised account of the improprieties of a section of Parisian society. The protagonist, Alice Lamy, is depicted embracing her elderly patron. The artfully styled lock of hair, the beauty spot and her revealing red dress all point to Alice's louche behaviour and the submissiveness in her patron's gesture suggests she has ensnared him completely. The title, Reine de Joie, is a thinly veiled reference to a French term for a prostitute: une fille de joie. The critic, Thadée Natanson, described Toulouse-Lautrec's poster thus,

'It is the latest [poster], above all, that has thrilled us: the delicious Reine de Joie, light, pretty and exquisitely perverse.'.
Associated objects
Bibliographic references
  • Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1962
  • pp. 36-7 Hannah Brocklehurst and Frances Fowle. Pin-ups : Toulouse-Lautrec and the art of celebrity. Edinburgh : National Galleries of Scotland, 2018. 120 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 30 x 17 cm. ISBN: 9781911054214
  • There are various sources which claim the female character shown is called Hélène Roland and others identify her as Alice Lamy. It is not clear where this confusion began. Joze's novel is antisemitic in its portrayal of the banker, the Baron de Rozenfeld, also known as Olizac. 'Reine de Joie' was published two years before the Dreyfus affair which thrust antisemitism in French society into the spotlight. This is reflected by various critics in their response to the book and Toulouse-Lautrec's advertisement, for example in a key poster book of 1896 'Les Affiches illustrées (1886-1895) by Ernest Maindron, the Baron de Rozenfeld character is described as 'au type abject, repoussant, véreux...ce vil personnage' (a repellent abject type, crooked, a vile personage) etc. Professor Ruth E. Iskin in the essay 'Identity and Interpretation: Receptions of Toulouse-Lautrec's Reine de joie Poster in the 1890s' notes: 'According to [Hannah] Arendt, "Jewish origin, without religious and political connotation, became everywhere a psychological quality, was changed into 'Jewishness,' and from then on could be considered only in the categories of virtue and vice." (Hannah Arendt, p.87, Antisemitism, Part One of the Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). The representation of the Jewish banker in Lautrec's avant-garde poster could be seen as a manifestation of this change, namely representing him as "vice." The superior position from which critics discussed his representation ensured a hierarchy of the viewer vs. the "vice" viewed.'
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
CIRC.556-1962

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Record createdJanuary 16, 2008
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O143593/reine-de-joie-poster-henri-de-toulouse/
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