Toulouse Lautrec - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | Notable Biographies

(1864/11/24 - 1901/09/09)

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec
Painter, engraver, and draughtsman French

He was born on November 24, 1864 in Albi, in the heart of one of the most important aristocratic families in France.
His parents, Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec - Monfa, and the Countess Adele Tapié de Céleyran, were cousins in first grade. His family settled in Paris in 1873.
When his parents separated in 1868, Henri was left in the care of his mother.
As a result of the consanguinity of his parents, he suffered an illness that affected the development of bones called picnodisostosis and that it began to manifest in 1874. In the year 1878 it suffered rupture of his left femur, the following year law, reason why his legs suffered an abnormal development because of a congenital disease that caused her lack of calcium, retained a normal torso but legs did not grow it.
Their drawing skills were stimulated by his uncle, count Charles of Toulouse-Lautrec. He began painting in 1878 in the workshop of René Princeteau, painter of military and Equestrian subjects. Later he studied painting with Fernand Cormon and Joseph Florentin Leon Bonnat.
He frequented cabarets in the Paris District of Montmartre, the Moulin Rougeas, and drew with his wit and befriended a group of artists and intellectuals including the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and French singer wereYvette Guilbert. Frequent visitor to the theater, the circus, and brothels. It captured the memories and impressions of the places and characters in portraits and sketches. Examples are entering La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge (1892, Toulouse-Lautrec museum, Albi), Jane Avril entering at the Moulin Rouge (1892, Courtland Gallery, London) and the street salon des Moulins (1894, Toulouse-Lautrec museum).
In 1890 it had already matured his style, walked away from Impressionism and decidedly approached Edgar Degas, as it reveals the rich chromaticism, the importance given to the line in the formation of the figure, and the prominent place occupied by the dynamics figures taken from contemporary and captured society in features and natural postures. The artist tries to give their work the look simple and spontaneous of the sketch, and actually often forms are reduced to the essential to such an extent that they seem almost stylized. Made with broad brushstrokes, his paintings and prints are, in essence, linear drawings. In the figures, the head appears more finished than the rest of the body as if the eye of the painter were of a camera focused on a specific point in such a way that the rest stay out of focus. Rejecting the chiaroscuro and sense the way plastic, it served as a descending, sharp perspective that recalls both Japanese prints and photographic art of its time. Its chromaticism is theatrical and fantasy, made of dark red and green. It was not an artist of the plain-air: light in outdoor scenes, is changing and unnatural. He stressed, however, the representation of the colorful nightlife, artificial, sordid and dense atmosphere.
Unlike the Impressionists, Toulouse-Lautrec, much insisted on the expressions of the faces to reveal a character or an emotional state, and exaggerated traits to caricatured faces, fascinated by unique topics such as prostitutes or marginalized by society, grotesque creatures and, at the same time, deeply human. In 1891 drew his first poster commissioned by the Moulin Rouge to announce the dancers La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé.
His fondness for alcohol impaired their health, and from 1897 suffered manias, depressions and paralysis in the legs and flank attacks. In that year, suffering from delirium tremens shot to the walls of his house trying to kill imaginary spiders. All this did not prevent him continue painting until in 1899 he was interned in a mental hospital, where he made a collection of paintings on the circus.
He left his Studio to take refuge with his mother in Malromé Castle, owned by the family, where died on September 9, 1901.
The Toulouse-Lautrec museum in the La Berbie Palace was opened in 1922.