Toulouse: a cabaret menu signed by Toulouse-Lautrec put up for auction
This Wednesday, Géraldine Martres, auctioneer at the Hôtel des Ventes Artpaugée in Toulouse, encountered at auction a lot of objects from a Toulouse bourgeois house. Among this inventory, a menu signed by the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, appears at 3000 €.
This Wednesday, you are auctioning rue des Pharaons, a beautiful set of furniture and objects. Tell us.
The owner of this Toulouse bourgeois house located on the Côte Pavée, has to move and therefore cannot take everything with him. This house, more than a century old, has remained in its own juice and contains very beautiful pieces chosen and collected over the years by people of taste and connoisseurs. Nothing has ever been sold. It is a very nice discovery.
Detail us some parts.
For example, there is a set of furniture called “neoabasque” from the 1940s, with fluted decor, signed Victor Courtray, a designer based in the Basque Country. Another with a rich decoration of 18th century marquetry signed Mathieu Belfort, official supplier to Napoleon III. Paintings from the Dutch School of the 16th century. A very beautiful Daum crystal vase (a crystal factory founded in Nancy in 1878), or a bronze sculpture by the Toulouse sculptor Alexandre Falguière, etc. A set presented around 100,000 €.
And a menu by Toulouse-Lautrec…
This is obviously the original and surprising piece of this sale. The one you don’t expect and that grabs your attention. A menu made at the end of the 19th century, written in ink on a print decorated with a bird on a branch, a thrush apparently. At the bottom of the menu, the artist’s signature followed by the mention Lautrec, for those close to you.
Why had he signed the menu for a dinner show?
At the time, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a very famous artist, painter, illustrator, lithographer and poster designer. Born in Albi in 1864, he died in 1901. He is an artist from the South-West. Like many 19th century painters, he illustrated catalogues, menus and posters. Mucha did too. Following a congenital disease that occurred in childhood, his growth was abruptly interrupted. He remains handicapped and small. But this man with a strong personality will “overcome” his handicap through art and his passion for Fine Arts from his early years. Everyone also knows their taste for the pleasures of life, including those of the table. He was both a gastronome and an enlightened cook who practiced at home and in the brothels he frequented assiduously. He was also the author of the famous Cookbooks, a collection of 80 scoundrel recipes, overflowing with vitality and indulgence, where art is never far away.
What can you say about the origin of this menu and what does it consist of?
We do not know how this menu arrived in this family. It is assumed that this menu was prepared in one of the many show mills he frequented in the Montmartre district of Paris, including that of La Galette. Places of his daily life. A menu intended to be decorated on a table or sent as a gift to friends can be to this family. It is composed of dishes prepared around recipes dear to gourmets of the time with names certainly invented by the artist: impressionist soup, in other words colored with lots of vegetables, lobster, duck with buckwheat olives, roast beef with ratachou (Breton hotpot with cabbage), veronese beans. For dessert: charlotte à la russe, dessert made from fruit salad also called charlotte à la parisienne. On this menu, this dessert is followed by the mention of Vive la France…. Petit fours. Cheeses. And Bordeaux wines.
How much do you estimate the bid for this menu?
It was revealed at €3,000. But he can go to much more. It is an object that is both original and interesting with culinary information about the time.
Have you ever had anything atypical in this style?
Yes. For example, a night light clock from the 19th century whose particularity was to be lit at the back to see the time at night. Again a fairly rare item. We can also cite a brooch designed by the sculptor-painter Alexandre Calder, who specialized in mobile works and whose type of object remained rare.
This Wednesday from 2:30 p.m., 47 rue des Pharaons in Toulouse.