Cover Design for "Les Vieilles Histoires"

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lautrec designed this cover for a collection of songs composed by Désiré Dihau, a bassoonist and distant cousin of the artist. Dihau appears in the grey suit and top hat leading the poet and lyricist Jean Goudezki, in the guise of a bear, toward the Institut de France in Paris. Their destination, the seat of the French Academy, suggests a tongue-in-cheek attempt to elevate the status of these popular songs. Lautrec produced a second edition of the lithograph printed in five colors similar to those applied with watercolor to this first edition proof.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art