| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864-1901), French postimpressionist painter, lithographer, and illustrator,
who documented the bohemian nightlife of late-19th-century Paris.
Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi into one of the oldest
aristocratic families. He broke both legs as an adolescent, and because of a
congenital calcium deficiency, they remained stunted for the rest of his life.
During his convalescence, his mother encouraged him to paint. He subsequently
studied with French academic painters L. J. F. Bonnat and Fernand Cormon.
Toulouse-Lautrec frequented the Moulin Rouge and other
cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris, where his wit attracted a large
group of artists and intellectuals, including Irish author Oscar
Wilde, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, and French performer
Yvette Guilbert. He also frequented the theater, the circus, and Parisian
brothels. Toulouse-Lautrec preserved his impressions of these places and their
celebrities in portraits and sketches of striking originality and power.
Outstanding examples are La Goulou Entering the Moulin Rouge (1892, Musée
Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi), Jane Avril Entering the Moulin Rouge (1892,
Courtauld Gallery, London), and Au salon de la rue des Moulins (1894,
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec). His alcoholic dissipation, however, eventually brought
on a paralytic stroke, to which he succumbed at Malromé, one of his family's
estates.
Toulouse-Lautrec, many of whose works are in the museum
that bears his name in Albi, was a prolific creator. His oeuvre includes great
numbers of paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, and posters, as well as
illustrations for various contemporary newspapers. He incorporated into his own
highly individual method elements of the styles of various contemporary artists,
especially French painters Edgar Degas and Paul
Gauguin. Japanese art, then coming into vogue in Paris, influenced his
use of sharp delineation, asymmetric composition, oblique angles, and flat areas
of color. His work inspired van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and
Georges Rouault. |
