Artist: Georges Meunier French (1869-1942)
Title: Trianon Concert
Plate: PL. 62
Original lithograph from "Les Maitres de L'Affiche" series.
Printed by Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, 1897.
Presented in 16 x 20 in. acid free, archival museum mat, with framing labels. Ready to frame. Shipped boxed flat via FedEx.
Certificate of Authenticity.
Maitre Sheet Size: 11 3/8 in x 15 3/4 in 29 cm x 40 cm
Price: $225.00
Full size sold for $ 3,000 US Poster Auctions International, NY. Nov 2005
"Meunier makes it clear that this famous cafe-concert is as good a place for a cafe as for a concert, for drinks and merry gossip as for whatever's on display on the distant stage. The natural, liberated self-assurance of these Parisiennes of a century ago still comes through with astonishing immediacy…Arguably the best work of Meunier" (Rennert, PAI-XXXI, 392)
"Meunier, a beaux Arts-trained painter and decorative artist, also designed 56 known posters that are much in the manner of Cheret, not surprising since he worked at the master's Chaix printing plant, started in 1894" (Rennert, PAI-XXII 414)
The Trianon-Concert was built as a café concert in 1894 in the garden of the Élysée Montmartre, which was requisitioned for the purpose. Édouard Jean Niermans (1859–1928), a young architect who designed or rebuilt several theaters around that time, designed and decorated the Trianon-Concert. Opening in 1895, the Trianon-Concert was one of Paris's first music halls. Mistinguett, (Jeanne-Marie Bourgeois) made her debut at the Petit-Casino and the Trianon-Concert in its first year. Although her voice was thin, she was an accomplished mimic and comedian, became known for her shapely legs and risqué routines, and later became a star at the Moulin Rouge.
In 1897 a new owner of the Élysée Montmartre refurbished the property, making two rooms: one for concerts, reviews and recitals, and the other for dancing and skating. The architect, again Édouard Niermans, used steelwork salvaged from Gustave Eiffel's Pavillon de France, built for the Exposition universelle (1889). Artists such as La Goulue, Grille d’Egoût and Valentin le désossé performed on the stage, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a regular visitor. The quick-change artist Leopoldo Fregoli performed there.