Monsieur Fourcade

In 1889 Paris was showing itself off to the world. The Eiffel Tower had just gone up for the Exposition Universelle, and the young could now exhibit at the Salon des Independants without passing a jury. Toulouse-Lautrec, then 24, sent this pastel there. It shows a man in evening dress and a top hat, caught leaning forward as if stepping straight out of the picture toward you. Working in pastel let Lautrec move fast and keep the smudged energy of the moment, close to the feel of a snapshot. That he exhibited it rather than filing it away as a study says he thought it finished. The sitter is named Fourcade, and behind him, faintly, stands a second top-hatted figure.