Menu pour un Dîner chez May Belfort

After the success of his first poster for the Moulin Rouge nightclub in 1891, Lautrec's large-scale prints were commissioned by nearly all the leading performers of the era. Lautrec first saw the Irish singer May Egan (known as May Belfort), at the café concert Les Décadents in 1895, and shortly after meeting she commissioned him to create a large poster for her upcoming performance at the Petit Casino. He rendered her in the midst of her act—dressed in baby clothes, carrying a black kitten, and singing a sexually suggestive song in her Saxon accent. As with many of the performers Lautrec admired, he continued to use Belfort as a subject, creating five other lithographs and one painting of the singer in a three-year period. The lithograph under consideration was done as a menu for a special dinner at May Belfort's home at the height of her fame in 1896. Above her address, Lautrec rendered a cat on the prowl after an unsuspecting mouse that has just entered an enlarged version of the artist's instantly recognizable monogram. The wit and simplicity of this charming print reveals the humor of both the artist and his patron.