How Much Is Jane Avril Worth?

Jane Avril is one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s most important muses, central to his Montmartre project alongside La Goulue, Yvette Guilbert, and Cha-U-Kao. Works from 1891–1892 capture the artist at the height of his creative engagement with Parisian nightlife, and paintings of Avril are core to museum narratives and scholarship. While the single most famous “Jane Avril” image is the 1893 poster, painted depictions are scarcer and carry meaningful premiums over works on paper. The Clark painting’s date and subject place it squarely within the artist’s most coveted thematic period, making it highly resonant with collectors seeking canonical Belle Époque imagery that bridges fine art and the spectacle of the cabaret.

The work is executed in oil on laminate cardboard, mounted on panel—desirable as a painted work relative to drawings or lithographs, yet generally valued below the artist’s larger oils on canvas. Lautrec’s board/cardboard paintings from the 1890s are prized for their immediacy and painterly character and have achieved multi-million results at auction. That said, collectors typically apply a discount versus canvas for perceived durability and prestige. If condition is excellent (stable support, minimal restorations), the support becomes less of a deterrent. In this case, the oil medium offsets some of the board/cardboard effect, supporting an upper‑mid valuation tier consistent with recent results for comparable supports.

At 63.2 × 42.2 cm, the painting is of modest, intimate scale, and the composition is a bust‑length portrait rather than a multi‑figure interior. In Lautrec’s market, scale correlates with price, and his most valuable works tend to be larger, fully developed canvases (e.g., At the Moulin Rouge). Still, small and medium-format oils from the early 1890s can be highly sought after when the sitter is iconic and the execution strong. The subject’s recognizability (Jane Avril) partly compensates for the size, but the composition’s intimacy naturally caps the ceiling below major, exhibition-defining canvases—hence a range in the high single digits to low eight figures, not the mid‑teens and above.

The ownership line—from Frantz Jourdain in Paris to Wildenstein (New York), then to Robert Sterling Clark, and finally the Clark Art Institute—confers exceptional credibility. Long-term museum custody is a powerful market signal: it underwrites authenticity, literature/exhibition exposure, and desirability. Works with this caliber of provenance often command premiums, and they can attract institutional interest when deaccessioned. While museum ownership removes any near‑term sale likelihood, a hypothetical offering with this pedigree would benefit from global marketing and competitive bidding. The only caveat is that some buyers prioritize large canvases; nonetheless, the provenance quality squarely supports upper‑mid tier pricing for the artist’s painted works.