Yaneff.com

Full size (printed in1892) sold for $ 75,500 US Sotheby's, N.Y. Lot 41, March 2001.

 
"Of all the posters advertising a publication, LA REINE DE JOIE is surely one of the most delightful. The book, 'Queen of Pleasure,' deals with a girl of easy virtue, and Toulouse-Lautrec chooses to depict her doing what she does best, bestowing her questionable favors on a well-heeled heel. His oily satisfaction, her professional polish, and even the jaded nonchalance of the uninvolved gentlemen at their side combine to make a statement full of wit and irony, as well as profound insight"(Wine Spectator 49)

Cover artwork of Reine de Joie by Pierre Bonnard

“Victor Joze, a Polish writer of cheap erotic novels and a friend of Lautrec, in 1892 published "Reine de Joie/Moeurs du Demi-Monde" (Queen of Joy, or, The World of Easy Virtue). It was a perfect subject for Lautrec. The episode shown is one in which the heroine of the novel, Hélène Roland, kisses the corpulent Olizac on the nose at dinner. At the insistence of Baron Rothschild—who believed the main character in the novel, a Baron Rosenfeld, to be modeled on himself—attempts were made to suppress the entire edition. This did not, however, prevent the publishers of Fin de Siècle from riding on the publicity of such a scandal and selling parts of the story. As Ebria Feinblatt notes: “The poster is one of the most piquant and popular that the artist produced... Aside from the acutely realistic characterizations, the impact of the composition lies in the skillful use of pure color to model the forms, which assume an abstract quality” (Wagner, p. 19).” (Rennert)