May Belfort

A red dress sweeps towards the lower corner; a black cat looks out from a nest of pale frills. Above them, May Belfort's small face holds its place inside an enormous bonnet. Toulouse-Lautrec's 1895 poster makes a performer recognisable through a remarkably unequal distribution of detail. The dress catches the eye, while the face and animal invite it to linger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the design as a promotional poster made with four lithographic stones and spattered ink. ^[1]

Belfort's costume and cat belonged to her act. The performance gives those details a specific purpose; the related paintings and prints reveal how deliberately Lautrec shaped them for publicity. ^[2]

A singer's deliberately childlike act

Belfort's performance depended on the friction between an apparently innocent presentation and an adult audience's understanding. Colta Ives describes nursery rhymes with double meanings, delivered in a childish, lisping voice, accompanied by a frilled smock and mobcap. She connects the costume with the illustrated children of Kate Greenaway. The Musée de Louvain-la-Neuve's French account likewise stresses the puffed sleeves, large bonnet, immobile stance and black cat. These are features of an entertainer's professional persona. ^{[2] [14]}

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen connects the poster specifically with the song Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow. Its account gives the animal a concrete place in Belfort's repertoire. A viewer familiar with the song could recognise more than an attractive pet: costume and animal together recalled an act that could be heard as well as seen. The poster presents no musical notation, yet it can summon a performance through a few visible attributes. ^[3]

Cleveland's account of a separate 1895 oil portrait adds the audience's part. The singer remained still and encouraged spectators to join in the lyrics. That description helps explain why the frontal figure need not produce a spectacular gesture to make an effective advertisement. Stillness could itself belong to the entertainment. The surrounding audience supplied some of the action, although the poster leaves those people outside its rectangle. ^[15]

Lautrec's treatment lets the adult face remain particular within the exaggerated clothing. The bonnet does not erase the strong eyebrows, carefully placed eyes or small red mouth. We encounter someone performing a role through costume, voice and a familiar companion. The costume frames a recognisable adult face, preserving the tension on which the stage act depended.

The red dress gives the sheet its shape

Follow the dress down from the shoulders. The bright sleeves spread sideways around the chest; below the crossed arms, the long skirt narrows the figure into a slanting wedge. Its farthest point almost touches the circular monogram at the lower left. A diagonal boundary then continues towards the right edge, separating the performer from the band of lettering beneath. The body appears upright at its upper end while the skirt draws the eye emphatically across the sheet. These relationships are especially clear in the Met's impression. ^[1]

The red area is strikingly continuous. A small number of dark marks along its sides suggest an edge or fold, but the lower dress contains little internal modelling. Its breadth gives the much smaller dark shapes above it unusual force. Against this large, uncomplicated expanse, hair, cat and facial features become conspicuous dark interruptions.

The dress also makes the space around it work harder. On the right, scattered green strokes describe a rising floor, while an irregular grid behind the head and shoulder indicates the setting with extreme economy. The grid does not extend evenly across the whole background. It is broken by the figure, trails away into emptiness and becomes denser in selected places. Enough remains to place the woman against a surrounding surface without competing with her outline.

The long diagonal beneath the hem gives that sparse room a decisive direction. It tips the stage towards the viewer, while the huge name occupies a more stable strip below. The advertisement therefore joins two kinds of order: an oblique performance space and a word read across the bottom. The arrangement keeps the figure from seeming simply pasted above a caption. Dress, floor edge, monogram and name are connected parts of the design.

The pale background is equally substantial. Paper colour surrounds the figure, enters the bonnet and sleeves, and separates the eyes and lips from the hair. The 2005 Chicago exhibition checklist describes its poster impression, 1949.1007, as red, black, olive-green and yellow on tan wove paper. That description belongs to Chicago's sheet, but it makes a useful point about the image's apparent spareness: a modest number of printed colours and the underlying paper can support many distinct visual tasks. ^[16]

Face, frills and the animal in her arms

The face is a small light opening in a much busier arrangement. Dark curls cross the forehead and continue down either side; above, the bonnet expands into loose, angular loops. The headwear occupies far more space than the features it frames. Its thin boundaries make it seem light even at this exaggerated scale, whereas the hair forms an emphatic dark border close to the skin.

Look at the mouth after taking in the red skirt. Its tiny patch repeats the dress's strongest colour near the centre of the face. That echo helps connect two passages which otherwise differ greatly in scale and handling. The slight asymmetry of the eyes and the separately drawn eyebrows keep the face from becoming a simple emblem. Lautrec withholds much of the body's description while preserving these small differences.

Below, pale hands cross over pale fabric. Their long, narrow outlines need attention before the grip becomes legible. The sleeve edges break into repeated points, and diagonal lines suggest gathers. Those folds move in several directions around the cat, offering a concentrated patch of linear activity between the plain skirt and the more densely articulated head. Frills are both a component of Belfort's costume and a means of giving the upper body visual complexity.

The cat provides another order of clarity. Two ears and two light eyes make its head immediately readable inside a compact black shape. Its body is largely hidden by the arms. A curved tail reappears below, hanging over the red dress, where the change of ground makes the black stroke unmistakable. The animal is understood through separated indications rather than a complete anatomical description.

Its position also changes the portrait's balance. Belfort's head sits above the centre of the figure; the smaller feline face pulls attention towards one side. Dark hair on the opposite shoulder partly answers that weight. The poster can thus sustain two outward-looking faces within one silhouette. The two faces reward attention at close range within a design readable at a glance.

There is documentary evidence that the animal interested Lautrec beyond this advertisement. Ives reproduces a letter passage to Maxime Dethomas concerning a prospective feline mate and identifies other cat imagery in a Christmas card and a party menu. Her account connects the stage companion with an actual animal and with the artist's smaller printed designs. The animal connects the stage act with the small social exchanges around it. ^[2]

Related paintings reveal choices in the poster

The 1985 MoMA exhibition catalogue places two related works beside the poster entries: an oil on cardboard, Dortu P.587, and a gouache on paper, Dortu P.589. Their colour reproductions are particularly revealing. The oil's tall, narrow format contains a pale dress covered in long strokes, against a background of densely worked blue-green and warm marks. A substantial dark stage boundary interrupts the bottom. The bonnet, long curls, crossed hands and cat already form a recognisable group. ^[5]

In that oil, the dress participates in the surrounding texture. Light strokes travel down it, crossing warmer underlying colour, while the background contains a comparable abundance of marks. The figure is differentiated through the direction and brightness of paint as well as through her contour. Seen beside the poster, this makes the printed red field feel like a decisive redistribution of emphasis. The skirt ceases to compete internally with the face and arms.

The gouache offers a closer comparison with the advertisement's arrangement. Red runs down the skirt in separated streaks; the head and cat face forward; short greenish strokes sketch the background grid and sloping stage. Pale touches pick out ribbons and frills. Lettering begins below the stage line, but it does not yet possess the finished poster's confident scale and spacing. The shared motifs allow a close comparison without making the oil, gouache and lithograph interchangeable objects. ^[5]

The difference in the skirt changes the entire encounter. With streaked colour, the eye can wander through the lower body and notice its making. In the solid-red poster, that same area acts as a strong directional shape, delivering attention towards the upper figure. Small marks in the hair, cuffs and facial features now carry a greater proportion of the descriptive work. Simplification is therefore selective: the poster greatly reduces one passage while allowing others to remain intricate.

Cleveland's oil on millboard, 1958.54, is another Belfort image, catalogued as Dortu P.588. It shows the singer in pink against a much more fully occupied interior and belongs to the museum's drawings collection. Its material and catalogue number distinguish it from P.587 and P.589. Together these objects show how varied Lautrec's attention to the same stage persona could be, across different supports, colour relationships and arrangements of the arms. ^[15]

The other lithographs are separate designs

Miss May Belfort (Large Plate) names a separate lithographic composition. The Met's 1984.1203.162 is a black crayon-and-spatter lithograph, identified as a first state. It turns Belfort towards the left, with the cat partly concealed in her arms, and gives the dress a much more lightly drawn presence. In Ives's reproduction, foreground forms interrupt our approach to the performer. Her discussion connects such images with the low viewpoint of a seated spectator. ^{[17] [2]}

Here the difference between the poster and a smaller print is a difference of experience as well as dimensions. The advertisement gives us a frontal, isolated figure and a name. The Large Plate makes us look from a position in an audience, towards a person angled across the stage. The cat's dark head remains legible amid the faint lines, but it has a different relationship to the face and body. It belongs to another composition.

The Large Plate also has its own state history. Wittrock's 1985 exhibition entries distinguish a third-state colour trial proof at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from a third-state, second-edition impression at Boston Public Library. Neither description belongs to the Met's first-state sheet. Ives separately lists a Medium Plate, Wittrock 117, represented by Met 1984.1203.163. The terms identify particular designs, each with its own printing history. ^{[5] [2]}

Lettering changes the advertisement

The poster itself was also tested in a substantially different form. MoMA's 1985 catalogue reproduces the Schimmel trial proof, catalogue 269, identified as Wittrock P14/C. Enormous diagonal words reading Petit Casino enter on either side of Belfort. The skirt is broken by long pale streaks. The green text spreads into space left comparatively quiet in the familiar solid-red version. An advertisement for the venue and an advertisement centred on the performer's name exert different demands on the same arrangement. ^[5]

In the version with only Belfort's large name below, the generous spaces beside her shoulders let the costume expand. The curved letters beneath echo the bonnet's loose movement while their upright strokes give the base a firmer structure. At the far lower left, the monogram anchors the point of the red wedge. The poster's two names occupy different roles and scales: a large public identity stretched across the bottom and a compact artist's sign gathered into a circle.

Even small address lines distinguish impressions. The Met's image carries Arnould, 7, rue Racine. The National Gallery of Victoria records Kleinmann, 8, rue de la Victoire on its sheet, along with the catalogue identification Wittrock P14 B.iv. Its dimensions and accession belong to that particular object. The little wording at the edge can therefore tell us something that the instantly recognisable red dress cannot: which published version we are examining. ^{[1] [4]}

Collecting further complicated the image's advertising life. Phillip Dennis Cate identifies special proofs of May Belfort with a small additional cat wearing a ruff and monocle. Such a remarque offered collectors a variation beyond the principal composition. The performer and animal could attract an audience in one format and an attentive purchaser in another. The broader history of Lautrec's prints and posters makes those parallel destinations clearer. ^[18]

The comparable advertisement for May Milton belongs to another performer. Ives identifies Milton as an English dancer and Belfort as an Irish singer. Her 1895 poster is the separate blue-ground design, represented in Chicago by 1948.451. Belfort's red costume, cat and nursery-song act identify a different performer and advertisement. Looking closely at each restores the individuality that similar names and a shared date can obscure. ^{[2] [19]}