La Passagère du 54 – Promenade en Yacht (Passenger from Number 54 – On a Cruise),

1895–96

Toulouse-Lautrec became infatuated with the subject of this poster—an unnamed passenger from cabin 54—while on an ocean cruise from Le Havre to Bordeaux with his friend Maurice Guibert in August 1895. The stylish young woman, seemingly unaware of the artist’s presence, appears lost in idle contemplation of the sea. That fall, Lautrec derived a color lithograph from drawings made after a photograph taken on the ship, capturing the informality of a fleeting glance in a style he had perfected in his paintings and prints in the 1890s. The following year, the artist used the lithograph as a poster for an exhibition with the Salon des Cent, an international group of one hundred artists who sold their prints collectively at monthly exhibitions in Paris.