File:Loïe Fuller (BM 1977,1105.14 2).jpg

Height: 343 millimetres

Width: 250 millimetres (max.)

For a detailed list of the colours used, see Wittrock. Proof before the edition of 50. (Text from 'From Manet to Toulouse-Lautrec', BM 1978, cat.89) This print is quite exceptional in Lautrec's oeuvre. According to Delteil, who obtained his information from Andre Marty, the publisher of the print, the lithograph was only printed in black. Each impression was then hand coloured by Lautrec himself, with a final heightening of gold or silver powder (the last idea obviously being borrowed from Japanese prints). This account however cannot be correct. Decisive evidence is supplied by an impression (sold Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 2 June 1959, lot 31, ill.) where only the base stone was printed; in this the design only extends about a centimetre to the side and above the dancer, while the drapery is entirely blank. This proves that at least two stones were employed, and indeed a further impression recently sold (Sotheby's, 4 October 1977, lot 279, ill.) had the clear signs of three different plate marks. Further, from a comparison of several impressions, it appears that the colours in which it was printed vary, quite apart from the differences in the hand colouring applied later.

Our impression has added interest in being an 'epreuve de passe' - that is the artist's declaration that he is satisfied with the quality of impression before any edition is run off. Joyant (1927, p. 89) emphasizes that Lautrec 'detruisait impitoyablement les epreuves de passe' and asserts that very few of them could have escaped into circulation. Loie Fuller came from America; she began dancing at the Folies-Bergere in October 1892 and caused a sensation. Delteil reprints a remarkable description of her act. She came on stage swathed in a mass of drapery which she swirled around her in a succession of patterns. The only illumination came from coloured electric spot-lights which played on the falling drapery in a kaleidoscope of colours. It must have been this effect of shifting colour which Lautrec was trying to capture by colouring each impression differently.