Histoires Naturelles

A turkey bends its head beneath a rounded body. A swan stretches towards the water. A horse turns its head towards us, its harness described by a few heavy lines. In Histoires naturelles, Toulouse-Lautrec gives each animal a different presence on the page. The variety matters as much as the economy: a solid silhouette, a pale contour and a densely shaded body offer different ways of noticing a living creature.

The book brings Lautrec's images together with Jules Renard's short French animal narratives. Published in Paris by Henri Floury in 1899, it contains lithographs catalogued as designs of 1897. The Museum of Modern Art identifies the publication as an illustrated book with twenty-three transfer lithographs, including the front of the wrapper. It belongs to the intimate, sequential world of his prints and illustrated books, where turning a leaf changes the encounter. ^[1]

A book built from separate acts of looking

The Bibliothèque nationale de France's digitised copy preserves the black illustrated wrapper within a bound volume. Further inside, a typographic title sheet names Renard, Lautrec, Floury and the year 1899. These are different components. The familiar image with the black animal above the words Histoires Naturelles is the wrapper design, Wittrock 202; the typographic title sheet is not an additional animal lithograph. Wittrock's 1985 exhibition catalogue explicitly counts a cover and twenty-two illustrations. ^{[2] [3]}

The distinction becomes useful when a single leaf is reproduced on its own. An interior illustration generally combines an animal's French name with one or more images. Renard's prose follows on another leaf, with the heading repeated in a more regular typographic arrangement. Looking and reading are connected through this return of the name, while each has room to proceed at its own pace. In the turkey sequence, for instance, the image occupies relatively little of a large field; the following text starts well below its own heading. Space contributes to the book's rhythm. ^[13]

The colophon gives that arrangement a material history. It states that the lithographs were pulled on Henry Stern's hand presses and that Ch. Renaudie supplied the typography. The visible drawing and the printed prose reached the reader through distinct kinds of work. MoMA's copy measures about 31.8 × 23 centimetres when closed: this is a substantial book in which a small image can remain surrounded by generous paper. ^{[2] [1]}

Renard's proposal and the earlier book

Katia Poletti's 2025 Vallotton catalogue reproduces Renard's journal entry of 26 December 1895: Lautrec proposed illustrating about eight stories, selling one hundred copies at twenty-five francs each and sharing the profits. This early proposal differs from the eventual book's contents; it does not establish the final accounts. ^[14]

Poletti also quotes Renard's letter to Vallotton of 5 January 1896 requesting a cover for Flammarion. That separate publication appeared in spring 1896 with forty-five narratives. The documents reveal decisions about illustration and publishing, without reducing the interval before Lautrec's book to one quarrel or one biographical explanation. ^[14]

The finished collaboration brings together two independent observers. Renard's prose repeatedly invents a human explanation for an animal's behaviour, then lets the observed creature disturb that explanation. Lautrec can work beside this pattern without translating every sentence into a depicted event. The turkey's compact weight, the swan's searching neck and the horse's harness each supply a physical presence against which the reader can test the narrator's language. ^{[13] [15] [16]}

The black cover animal and the author's name

The wrapper concentrates its strongest black mass near the top. The animal curls forward, with a pointed muzzle, projecting ears and a broad tail stretching towards the right. Beneath it, a narrow vertical line descends through both lines of the title towards the bottom of the sheet. A thinner horizontal mark crosses behind the animal; another low mark gives the bottom of the design a footing. The round monogram at the upper left balances the much larger black shape. The composition joins a compact body to an unexpectedly long, spare framework. ^[2]

The Grand Palais's 2019 exhibition guide identifies the animal as a fox and reads it as a humorous reference to the author's surname: renard is French for fox. That institutional identification gives the silhouette a particular literary role. It introduces the writer through an animal image before the interior title sheet supplies his name in type. ^[17]

Looking between wrapper and interior makes the range of Lautrec's means especially apparent. The fox's dark body is legible almost at once, although small openings break its mass. Inside, some animals barely separate from the paper until the eye follows their contours. The cover establishes an emphatic entrance, while the following leaves repeatedly adjust the amount of drawing needed to hold attention. ^{[2] [15]}

The turkey: a grand manner in a small body

Renard's La Dinde begins with a turkey behaving as though the old regime still prevailed. Its regular meals, stiff feathers and sweeping wing tips become the attributes of an important person maintaining appearances. The narrator offers a deliberately deflating compliment, and the bird turns its back. Renard has made an encounter out of differences between what the creature does and what the human observer claims it means. ^[13]

Lautrec's corresponding illustration is less ceremonious. The head hangs down and forward, while the feathered body curves into a compressed, uneven oval. Thin legs support that comparatively bulky shape. Repeated strokes turn around the wing and back, with darker marks gathering at the neck and feet. The bird has weight without an enclosing yard, architectural backdrop or attendant poultry. Its isolation makes the relation of body, legs and lowered head unusually easy to examine. ^[13]

That pose does not reproduce the entire narrative or explain which moment it depicts. It gives the reader something more independent to compare with Renard's aristocratic language: a particular, ungainly arrangement of feathers and limbs. The wide empty area beneath the bird keeps it small within the leaf. When the prose enlarges its importance, we can still remember how little space the animal actually occupied. The juxtaposition lets the reader move between that physical smallness and the narrator's elaborate account of importance. ^[13]

The peacock: display divided across a page

The peacock's story makes courtship into an endlessly deferred wedding. Renard describes a bird dressed for the occasion, waiting for a bride who fails to arrive. It calls from a roof while the other poultry have grown too accustomed to its splendour to look up. The bird's beautiful appearance and the indifference around it coexist. ^[18]

Lautrec distributes the subject across the illustration. Two birds perch along a high horizontal support at the upper left, their tails descending. At the right edge, a separate spread of patterned feathers introduces the familiar eye-like markings at a much larger scale. Between them, Le Paon occupies two widely separated lines. The reader must move between the distant bodies, the expansive feather detail and the name. ^[18]

This arrangement supplies more than a handsome bird in profile. The perch turns long tail feathers into downward lines, while the cropped display at the right makes plumage almost a patterned surface. Renard unfolds a small comedy through waiting and calling; Lautrec gives the eye several distinct distances from which to appreciate the same subject. Neither contribution needs to be absorbed completely into the other. ^[18]

The swan: poetry corrected by appetite

Le Cygne offers a particularly sharp meeting of text and image. Renard first imagines a white swan pursuing clouds reflected in the water. Its dipping neck seems part of an impossible appetite for something insubstantial. Then the narrator corrects himself: the bird is searching the nourishing mud and bringing up worms. The poetic account survives only until the observed feeding behaviour calls it into question. ^[15]

Lautrec's large foreground swan bends its neck towards the lower right. A small dark accent at the head and beak anchors an otherwise lightly outlined creature. Wing contours rise behind the curving neck; long, faint marks spread leftwards across the water. A second, smaller view at the upper left shows an upright neck and a reflection. The repeated subject gives more than one attitude, without turning the leaf into a numbered sequence of actions. ^[15]

Much of the foreground bird's whiteness consists of unprinted paper. A viewer completes its broad body by connecting widely separated marks. The black around the face becomes especially active because so little surrounding material competes with it. Compare that tiny concentration with the cover fox's nearly continuous dark body: Lautrec can establish an animal through either a large mass or the selective interruption of an open field. ^{[15] [2]}

The downward beak can sit comfortably beside both phases of Renard's account. Before reading, it might suggest an elegant movement across reflective water. After reading, the same movement becomes practical feeding. The image has not changed; our attention to it has. The book lets the reader experience that adjustment by returning from the prose to the animal leaf. ^[15]

Ducks and pigeons: two kinds of shared space

Renard's ducks waddle towards familiar muddy water like people keeping a business appointment. The text follows their entry into the pool, their contact and eventual stillness. Lautrec provides two strongly differentiated views: a swimming bird low on the left and another lifting its wings above the water at the upper right. Ripples and reflections connect bodies to their surroundings, while the word Canards fills the intervening space. The image gives water movement a greater role than the nearly motionless conclusion of the prose. ^[19]

The duck in front has a long neck and a pointed, irregular arrangement of wings and tail. Broad shading beneath its body makes the reflection substantial. Above, outspread wings establish a different axis across the page. These contrasts allow the single title to encompass several observations. The leaf is a composed gathering of animal attitudes, and need not be treated as a literal snapshot of the two ducks at one instant in Renard's narrative. ^[19]

Les Pigeons changes the arrangement again. Two dark birds touch heads on a high ledge at the upper left; a lower group includes a conspicuous fan of pale tail feathers. The title sits in the open interval between them. Roof lines make one grouping architectural, while the lower birds are more loosely located. Dark bodies and pale feathers divide attention without requiring a fully described building or yard. ^[20]

Renard's prose accumulates pigeon habits, flights and appearances before admitting that the birds eventually bore him. Lautrec's leaf remains available for a less impatient inspection. Its separate groups encourage comparison of feathers, posture and proximity. That difference is part of the collaboration's interest: an illustration can sustain attention even when the narrator announces that his has run out. ^[20]

The stag: an encounter interrupted

In Le Cerf, Renard approaches a deer along a woodland path. At first he thinks he sees a person carrying a plant on his head; the antlers gradually resolve into an animal. He reassures it that his gun is only for appearances. The deer flees when he falls silent, leaving the narrator to imagine a companionable walk in which the antlers might even carry his gun. The animal escapes the role the speaker has begun inventing for it. ^[21]

Lautrec places a large stag across the lower part of the illustration, with antlers reaching high along the right. Smaller, fainter deer occupy the upper left. The foreground body's shading is far denser than the swan's delicate outline: repeated marks define the ribcage, flank and bent rear legs, while darker antler branches separate from a grainy surrounding field. The animal's name sits to the left of its neck, between the two scales of representation. ^[21]

The antlers deserve a second look after reading Renard's opening mistake. Their branching structure makes his comparison with a small leafless tree understandable, yet the drawing also ties them firmly to the alert head and long neck. The illustration allows us to move between an isolated visual likeness and the complete body to which it belongs. The smaller animals above extend the space without supplying the human observer. His voice enters through the prose, while the animal retains the illustration's visual field. ^[21]

The horse: affection meets an unspoken response

Renard's horse is physically awkward and thoroughly cherished. The narrator wonders why it accepts harness and service so patiently, then lists the feeding, grooming and caresses he supplies. Whether these attentions move the animal remains unknowable. A bodily sound ends the account with an abrupt refusal of the sentimental answer the speaker might have wanted. ^[16]

Lautrec's Le Cheval, the final animal illustration, gives the harness conspicuous weight. Heavy, uneven lines cross the neck and flank, with rings and straps interrupting the body's light interior. The horse turns its long head towards us. Its ears rise apart, while a few dark marks establish eyes, muzzle and forelock. Small forms and oblique ground lines above it leave the setting lightly indicated. The animal is present as a working body, with equipment fitted around its particular shape. ^[16]

The broad open spaces make a useful comparison with the much earlier White Horse Gazelle, whose substantial head and shoulders are modelled through coloured paint. Here the harness and changing width of the black contour do much of the descriptive work. The comparison concerns two ways of attending to horses; it does not identify Renard's unnamed animal with Gazelle or establish that the book illustration derives from that painting. ^[16]

Together, prose and image make the animal's availability to human interpretation feel limited. We can follow its head, equipment and posture, just as we can follow the narrator's care. We cannot receive its thoughts. Renard leaves that gap explicit, and Lautrec supplies a creature sufficiently particular to keep it interesting. ^[16]

Original illustrations, later editions and individual copies

The book's date and illustration credits matter because Histoires naturelles has more than one illustrated history. Poletti's catalogue distinguishes the 1896 Vallotton publication from Lautrec's 1899 volume and the 1904 edition with drawings by Pierre Bonnard. A familiar Renard text does not identify which illustrator or edition a reader has encountered. ^[14]

A later book can also reproduce Lautrec's own designs. Japan's CiNii Books records Floury's 1949 publication as a facsimile of the 1899 edition, quoting its statement of an issue of 1,350 copies. Those reproductions should be identified by their own publication date. The title and animal image may closely resemble the earlier book while the physical object belongs to a different printing history. ^[22]

Particular original copies have their own additions, too. The National Gallery of Art's volume, accession 2014.112.28, contains twenty-two lithographic illustrations and an original conté-crayon drawing on the dedication page, with an inscription to Stern. That drawing is a feature of this copy, rather than an extra lithographic design to add to the published sequence. ^[23] An added drawing belongs to a particular volume's history, while Wittrock 202–224 identifies the printed designs shared by the edition.