To offer you even more information about the museum and Vincent van Gogh, and serve you better, we use cookies. By clicking ‘Accept’, you are giving us permission to use these cookies. Cookies help us to ensure that the website works properly. We also analyse how the website is used, so that we can make any necessary improvements. Advertisements can also be displayed tailored to your interests. And finally, we use cookies to display forms, Google Maps and other embedded content.
Find out more about our cookies.

Discover the Parisian print world

shadow theatre

The popular shadow theatre at the nightclub Le Chat Noir had an immense impact on the development of a modern, decorative style in fin-de-siècle printmaking.

Artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard attended performances and began to use silhouettes in their prints.

These monochrome, flat expanses gave their prints a modern appearance and enabled them to evoke a particular mood.

View this artwork
View this artwork
  • Le Chat Noir and Henri Rivière

    Shadow theatre had existed since the eighteenth century as a simple family entertainment, but it developed at Le Chat Noir into a genuine Gesamtkunstwerk.

    Between 1885 and 1897, the printmaker Henri Rivière created over forty shows, on which about twenty artists worked at a time.

    Fairytale worlds were evoked using figures cut out of zinc that were moved behind a curtain illuminated by a bright light.

    These were fully-fledged theatre performances, with painted sets, sound effects and words and music by contemporary composers.

  • View this artwork
  • Posters, prints, and sheet music

    Artists were inspired by the shadow theatre to use silhouettes in their prints, but other prints also related directly to the performances.

    The latter were announced, for instance, by posters designed by Rivière and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. Rivière also took the initiative to create an illustrated edition of the words and music of the play La Marche à l’étoile.

  • View this artwork

Further Reading

Mariel Oberthür, Le Chat Noir 1881-1897, Paris 1992

Phillip Dennis Cate et al., The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant-Garde, 1875-1905, New Brunswick 1996

Phillip Dennis Cate et al., Around the Chat Noir. Arts and Pleasures in Bohemian Montmartre, 1880-1910, Paris 2012

12 prints in 'shadow theatre'

  • p2500S2008
  • p0951S1997
  • p0914N1996
  • p2360S2003
  • p2361S2003
  • p2003S2002
  • p2663S2012
  • p2664S2012
  • p2702S2012
  • p2733S2013
  • d1195S2015

Search the French print collection

Discover more

Continue your journey into the Parisian print world of the fin de siècle. Discover more printmakers, stories and themes. The connections are endless.

Explore