Small but deadly - Lautrec at the Courtauld

A summer gem glinting in the London galleries this season is the excellent Toulouse-Lautrec / Jane Avril exhibition at the Courtauld...

This small top-floor show (tip - pack extra oxygen and wear flats, or prepare to join a long queue for the lift!) focuses on the painter's works featuring Moulin Rouge muse, dancer Avril - notorious for her skeletal frame and erratic bird-like movements.

Of Lautrec, Avril said "Without a doubt I owed him the fame I enjoyed from that very first moment his poster of me appeared."

Lautrec's intense, studied and vibrant works absorb the viewer into the skewed, bohemian world of 1890's Paris.

The exhibition includes sketches and studies for some of Lautrec's most famous paintings and poster-works, giving an insight into his creative energy and composition process.

A major highlight is his iconic 'At the Moulin Rouge' group portrait - on special loan from the Art Institute of Chicago - a dynamically composed homage to the major players in his Montmartre circle.

Speaking of Lautrec's unique rapport with his female models, which shines through in these works, Avril commented "They were his friends as well as his models. He in turn had an uplifting effect on them. In his presence they were just women, and he treated them as equals. When he ate with them, often bringing a party of friends, they held their knives and forks daintily, restrained their conversation, had the feeling of being women of some standing. Lautrec's almost womanly intuition and sympathy shone like a light for them."

There is also a portrait of Avril dancing made by her eventual painter husband Maurice Biais. This offers a fascinating contrast in view of this otherwise familiar subject - a rare and somehow strangely inauthentic glimpse of Avril smiling.

Many historical documents accompany the exhibition (including photographs, playbills and letters) which follow Avril from the genesis of her erratic style - discovered whilst incarcerated in a mental hospital, at the bizarrely conceived 'Madwoman's Ball' - through her rise to fame at the Moulin and subsequent London tour.

To read more about the exhibition click here. To read more about the life of Jane Avril click here.

The show runs until 18 September 2011. Entry: £6 (£4.50 concessions) but admission is FREE on Mondays 10am-2pm.