The story
All 31 posters designed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the painter of Montmartre nightlife, belong to one municipal museum in Brussels. It stands in Ixelles, one of the communes that make up the city, and it opened in 1892 in a disused slaughterhouse, after the painter and collector Edmond De Pratere gave his pictures to the commune on condition that they be shown to the public.
Gifts kept coming. One of the most important came from Octave Maus, a lawyer who organised the avant-garde exhibiting circle Les XX, and it brought more than 200 Impressionist, Neo-Impressionist and Symbolist works. Today the collection holds nearly 15,000 works, mostly Belgian art from the 19th century onward, from paintings and sculpture to posters, photographs and video.
Among its paintings are Berthe Morisot's interior of a cottage on Jersey and Christ Calming the Storm by James Ensor, the painter from Ostend. For now visitors have to wait to see them. The museum has been closed since 2018 for an expansion and energy renovation costing about 11 million euros, and its reopening weekend is planned for 19 to 21 March 2027.
