Au Concert Possibly 1896 - 1946

This is "Au Concert," a print by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It's a quick, hazy image of people enjoying a concert, or maybe just pretending to. The color is almost entirely absent, save for a cool gray. Look at the way that color is applied in such sparse quantities. The man’s jacket is a solid block, whereas the woman is almost ghost-like, her presence implied rather than stated. It’s like Lautrec is saying something about how we see and what we choose to focus on. It feels like we’re catching a fleeting moment, a snapshot of Parisian life. The softness of the lithographic crayon lends itself well to the subject, and in other ways, it reminds me of Whistler’s prints, particularly his “nocturnes”.