Portrait of Monsieur Dennery

A Toulouse-Lautrec is not what most visitors expect at the Louvre, where the paintings mostly stop around 1848 and later work belongs to the Musée d'Orsay. This one is here because of the collection of Victor Lyon, an industrialist, and his wife Hélène. It was given to the state in 1961 on condition that it never be split up, and it reached the Louvre in 1977, so its Impressionists hang here beside older pictures. The sitter is Gustave Lucien Dennery, a painter a year older than the artist. The two were fellow students in the Paris studio of Fernand Cormon when this was painted, around 1883. Dennery lounges on a sofa in a dark suit and a bowler hat, one hand on a patterned cushion. Lautrec marked the canvas with his monogram, HTL, at the lower left.