Toulouse Lautrec
Some paintings by Toulouse Lautrec
Books about Toulouse Lautrec
A biography of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec....
November 24 1864 - September 9 1901
Son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse, Henri was the last in the family line. As a child, he was weak and often sick. By the age of ten he had begun to draw and paint.
He studied in Paris with academic painters. In 1886 he had a brief relationship with the painter (and model) Suzanne Valadon and during this year his first drawings were published in magazines. In 1888 he showed his work at the Les XX ('the twenty') exhibition in Brussels, and Theo van Gogh bought one of his pictures for the Goupil gallery. In 1889 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Independants. He frequented the Moulin Rouge and other cabarets of the Montmartre district (where he displayed his work), as well as the theater, circus, bars, dance-halls and brothels. His prolific paintings, sketches, drawing, posters and newspaper illustrations of these places are powerful and original.
In 1891 he joined
the Impressionists and Symbolists at their exhibition in the gallery Le
Barc de Boutteville and began to produce posters in a novel, stylized
manner for bars, music-halls and book publishers. He was influenced by various
contemporary artists, including Degas and Gauguin.
His work, though, with his handling of line and
dynamic use of color, has a stamp of its own. His poster of the singer
Aristide Bruant (see below) made him famous overnight. His posters have for many, summed up Paris ever
since. For others, the exquisite tenderness and artistry of paintings such as La
Toilette (below) are unsurpassable.
In 1893 he had his first one-man exhibition at Goupil and contributed to
other exhibitions. From time to time he lived in brothels to draw and
paint there. Between 1894 and 1897 he traveled in France, Belgium,
Holland, Spain, London and Lisbon. He had contact with the Nabis (see also article on Bonnard)
group of artists. Increasingly alcoholic, he collapsed in 1899 and was taken to
a mental hospital in Neuilly, but continued to drink. In 1901 he
suffered a partial paralysis and died at his mother's château.
Some paintings by Toulouse Lautrec
