Individual artist
From 1890 onwards, Guilbert focused on interpreting the chansons of contemporary songwriters like Aristide Bruant, and also wrote the occasional song herself.
She was not traditionally beautiful and had a poor singing voice, but she skilfully exploited her shortcomings to set herself apart from her more polished fellow artistes. Contemporaries called her a diseuse, because of the strongly articulated way she spoke rather than sang her songs.
Trademark Caricature
Her unique voice ‘pierced the fog of smoke, alcohol fumes, and breath,’ the critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in Yvette Guilbert, an artist’s book by Toulouse-Lautrec. The caricatural prints show the singer draped in her trademark long dress and gloves.
Rather than downplaying Guilbert’s flaws, Lautrec exaggerated her gawky figure and upturned nose to emphasise her individuality.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Artists' book Yvette Guilbert by Gustave Geffroy, 1894
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Yvette Guilbert, 1893
Further reading
- Yvette Guilbert, La chanson de ma vie (mes mémoires), Paris 1927
- Jacques Paul Dauriac et al., Yvette Guilbert, diseuse fin de siècle, tent.cat., Albi (Musée Toulouse-Lautrec) 1994
- Richard Thomson et al., Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, Washington 2005