Original crayon, brush, spatter and transferred screen lithograph printed in five colors (blue, red, yellow, black, olive-green) on wove poster paper. Signed with the artist's monogram device and dated on the stone lower left. A striking impression of the second and final state (after the removal of the remarque from the lower right corner of the stone), from an edition of 100 according to Adriani. Commissioned by May Milton; printed by Edward Ancourt.

Dimensions: 31 3/8" x 24 3/4".

Catalogue Reference: Delteil 356; AdhÈmar 149; Wittrock P17B, Adriani 134 ii/ii This poster was designed for an American tour of May Milton, an English dancer and friend of Jane Avril. She frequented the Irish and American Bar but performed for only one year in Paris. Here, Lautrec characteristically refrained from pettifying the dancer, and set her features in altered directions on her face, as if in a Japanese woodcut. Lautrec's large posters have survived mainly due to ardent nineteenth-century collectors, and the thieves who, as soon as the 'bill stickers' were out of sight, while the paste was still wet, would furtively peel them off walls. Apart from those pasted on walls and billboards out on city streets, impressions were also sold by bookshops and print dealers such as Edmond Sagot. And on occasion, the 'bill stickers' could be bribed to give up desirable posters. However he acquired it, it is known that Picasso had Lautrec's poster "May Milton" in his Montmartre studio, and put it in the background of his painting "The Blue Room" (or "The Bath"), 1901, now in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (Zervos I 103). (Zervos I 103).