Drum roll please, The National gallery of Australia Canberra has announced this year’s summer blockbuster exhibition by one of the greatest painters of the post-impressionist period.
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris and the Moulin Rouge is due to open at the National Gallery of Australia Canberra in December 2012 and is set to enthral art lovers globally as it is an international one off event that has taken over three years to bring to fruition.
The works that make up the exhibition have been loaned from 35 international collections such as the Musee d’Orsay Paris, the metropolitan Museum of Art New York, the Courtauld ,the Tate London and El Museo de art Thyssen Bornemisza Madrid, many of the 120 art works on display have never been publicly exhibited before.
The three works by Toulouse in the highly successful Masterpieces of Paris Exhibition were some of the most popular, Toulouse’s depictions of cafe society, the high and low life of the Bohemian Paris scene and of course the Moulin Rouge are some of his most celebrated works.
Toulouse painted the first poster for the Moulin Rouge Paris, home of the Can Can dance which depicted “La Goulue” (the glutton) and was a picture of the woman herself Louise Weber who created the famous dance of seduction and was reputed to have called out to the Prince of Wales on one of his private visits to watch La Goulue dance “Hey Wales, the champagnes on you.”
Lautrec who had amongst his band of friends Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde died tragically at the age of 36 from alcoholism and syphilis; due to his young death his works are rare and greatly treasured.
National Gallery of Australia Director, Ron Radford said, “The National Gallery of Australia is excited to bring together Australia’s first Toulouse-Lautrec retrospective exhibition, showing only in Canberra. Together with our own collection of works, the exhibition will provide a comprehensive insight into the artistic life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, through the late 19th century bohemian lifestyle of Paris.”
Because the exhibition is a onetime only show it is expected to attract scores of interstate and international visitors and therefore will be on timed ticketing, which was very successful during the Renaissance exhibition, tickets go on sale through Ticketek from September 2012 and the exhibition runs from Friday 14 December, for those who don’t know about timed ticketing, when booking you choose the date and time you would like to visit and therefore eliminate long boring queues.
