In the manner of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French, 1864–1901
Backstage, Between Sets, 2026
Colour lithograph
120 × 80 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.14.4
She sits at the mirror in a feather boa and a great red wig, half her face made up, fixing a false eyelash with one hand and checking her phone with the other. Behind her a stagehand with a towel on his shoulder looks as tired as a man can look. Lautrec drew performers backstage more often than on it. The eyelash is the show. The phone is the reviews.
The brief
A drag performer at a dressing-room mirror ringed with bulbs, half in make-up, checking a phone with one hand and fixing a lash with the other, a tired stagehand behind. Belle Époque colour lithograph poster, flat bold areas of red, black, mustard and cream, sinuous confident contour lines drawn in crayon, figures cropped sharply at the edges and seen from low tables, spattered tone, faces caricatured with tenderness and fatigue, large empty areas left as paper, gritty printed texture. Flat frontal reproduction of the poster on paper, the sheet fills the frame edge to edge, even lighting, no frame, no wall, no lettering, no text.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
