Représentations. Liane de Pougy

Original linen-backed lithograph, featuring a large portrait of Liane de Pougy by A. Gallice after a photograph by Léopold-Emile Reutlinger ("cliché Reutlinger" stated on the plate). Printed by G. Bataille. Horizontal and vertical fold marks, discreet traces of rolling at the hem of the dress, four pasted and stamped tax stamps, and a shadow in the left margin.

Exceptionally rare original poster advertising a performance by the dancer and courtesan Liane de Pougy, renowned for boldly displaying her beauty on stage and for the openly sapphic loves recounted in her writings (Idylle saphique, 1901).  This unrecorded document is the only copy we can trace.

Together with her lover Émilienne d’Alençon and her rival “La Belle Otero,” Liane de Pougy is known as one of the Three Graces of the Parisian demi-monde during the Belle Époque. Like Zola’s Nana, she triumphed on stage by sheer force of seduction: capitalising without restraint on the craze for café-concerts and music halls, she captivated vast audiences and succeeded in winning over the wealthiest patrons. Her beauty ensured the success of these pantomime, magic, and acrobatic performances on the stages of the Folies Bergère and the Olympia in particular. Reutlinger photographed her extensively: his archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France contains no fewer than 76 photographs of Liane de Pougy, in addition to the portrait used as inspiration for this poster (Album Reutlinger de portraits divers vol. 9, p. 23, no 133). She also benefited from the booming art of the poster during the turn of the century: several posters promoting her acts are known (Louis Geisler after Nadar for the Olympia, Paul Berthon for the Folies Bergère, Georges Redon for the Casino de Paris, and Manuel Orazi for a play by Lorrain, Rêve de Noël, at the Olympia), but this example remains unrecorded. Gallice’s design masterfully adapts Reutlinger’s portrait and provides a perfect illustration of “Liane de Pougy’s passion for pearls. Drawn to the shimmer of gold and precious stones, the celebrated courtesan was, even more than a hunter of diamonds, a ‘hunter of pearls’: the femininity and lunar glow of these nacreous spheres irresistibly attracted Liane who endured the blows of the famous English Egyptologist Lord Carnarvon’s riding crop in exchange for a pearl of inestimable value during the early years of her life as a courtesan” (Gabriella Asaro).

An exceptionally scarce portrait of the ‘woman-spectacle’ Liane de Pougy, magnificently embodying the "France of pleasure."