Au "Star", Le Havre (Miss Dolly, chanteuse anglaise)

For eleven weeks between late February and mid-May 1899, Lautrec was confined to a clinic in Neuilly for treatment of a breakdown resulting from his alcoholism. There the artist made his famous Cirque drawings, whose skill and accomplishment, he believed, won him his release. Upon his departure from the facility he visited his family's home in Albi, and then headed off for a recuperative seaside tour. His companion was Paul Viaud, who was charged with the responsibility of keeping the now "cured" artist away from drink. They visited Lautrec's close friend and later biographer Maurice Joyant in Le Crotoy on the Channel coast, and then went on to Le Havre, where they took rooms in the Hôtel de l'Amirauté. There were plenty of waterfront dives nearby that Lautrec knew from his trips to and from England, and it was inevitable that he would take to drink again. There was another attraction as well. Julia Frey picks up the story: "In Le Havre the sailors were often English, as were the barmaids who sang and danced in the taproom and might sometimes be persuaded to leave with a customer. A new furia struck Henry--a passion for Miss Dolly, the blonde English girl who served drinks at the Starwhere the year before he had done a couple of lithographs of performers leading the audience of sailors and dockers in English songs. Once again Henry both seduced and possessed his conquest, not physically, but through his art. He wrote to Joyant asking him to send paints and brushes" (in Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, London, 1994, p. 478).

In a letter dated 11 July, Lautrec wrote to Joyant that he had received the painting supplies, and mentioned that he had completed a sanguine drawing of "an English girl at the Star" (S. D. Schimmel, ed., The Letters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Oxford, 1991, letter 578, p. 355). A week later the artist again wrote to Joyant, advising him that he had just sent "a panel with the head of the Barmaid at the Star" (Letter 579, p. 356). These works are, respectively, Dortu nos. D.4.445 and P. 684; both are in the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi. The barmaid's name might have gone unrecorded, but Joyant knew her identity.

Lautrec did not mention the present portrait of Miss Dolly in his letters, but like Dortu P. 684, it is also painted on a wooden panel, one that Joyant might have sent him, this one of somewhat smaller size. This painting may have been done in Le Havre in July before Lautrec and Viaud continued on their jaunt--it gives the impression of having an outdoor, seaside setting, and could have conceivably been quickly and adeptly painted on the spot. Or it may have been done upon the artist's return to his Montmartre studio in October, as a recollection of the summer's adventures. Miss Dolly is seen here wearing a flat-topped British Royal Navy sailor's hat, and a navy-blue cape with a lace collar. Lautrec also made a lithograph of this subject (Delteil, no. 274), based on the painting.