TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (Henri de) Au cirque. Twenty-two colored pencil drawings. - Au cirque. Seventeen colored pencil drawings. Paris, London, Berlin, New-York: Goupil & Cie, Manzi, Joyant & Cie, 1905 (tome 1). - Paris: Librairie de France, [1932] (vol. 2). - 2 albums, folio, 430 x 320: (2 ff.), 3 pp., 22 plates; (2 ff.), 3 pp., 17 plates. First edition of these two magnificent albums, featuring 39 facsimile reproductions of circus drawings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). These works were produced in 1899, when the artist was confined to a clinic in Neuilly to treat his addiction to alcohol. The first volume, published in 1905, includes 22 plates and opens with a preface by art critic and collector Arsène Alexandre (1859-1937). In it, the latter recounts his meeting with the artist and evokes these drawings: "Before taking our leave, we return to his bright and cheerful white room (and we have returned there many times), to take a closer look at his latest works. And it's the circus scenes we're presenting to you today, which are one of his most curious works, and which were executed entirely from memory, without documents, without prior sketches, without notes, landmarks or milestones of any kind - in other words, a veritable prodigy of plastic intelligence, one of those attempts that many artists, indeed, would declare 'mad', being unable to bring to fruition. Composition, characterization of types, humor, breadth of execution - everything that was Lautrec's talent is to be found, or found again, in these drawings, where certain exaggerations of proportions sometimes justly attest to the sincerity and determination of this effort, the triumph of this memory, the integrity of these painterly faculties. Drawings by a madman? Drawings by a madman, certainly, but in the sense that Hok'sai meant it when he called himself "the old man mad for drawing". But, apart from that, the work of a man who has never been in better health. The second volume, published nearly 30 years later, completes the first collection with 17 reproductions. Each reproduction is mounted on blue-gray or cream cardboard and bears the publisher's oval dry-stamp. The first album was printed in an edition of 200 numbered copies on vellum (no. 66). The second was printed at 215 copies (including 15 hors commerce) on Arches vellum (no. 13). Foxing on the dust jackets. The flaps of the first volume are slightly torn. Numerous foxing marks on text leaves, as is often the case. The reproductions, on the other hand, are practically free of foxing.