Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: biography
Henri-Marie de Toulouse Lautrec was born into an old aristocratic family on 24 November 1864 at Albi in the south of France. He was the only one of his parents' children who survived to adulthood, he spent his early youth between the family estates at Bosc and Céleyran and Paris where he settled permanently with his mother in 1872, His poor health, however, did not permit him to stay in the capital for long and so in 1874 he returned to Albi where he continued education with a private tutor. He suffered two accidents, between 1878 and 1879 that resulted in broken thighbones, a very long convalescence and a permanent disability. It was during his convalescence that he began to draw. In 1881 he want back to Paris where he studied with Princeteau , then he moved on to the atelier of Léon Bonnat and finally joined the studio of Fernand Cormon. In 1884 he opened an atelier together with his friend, René Grenier, in the same building where Degas lived. He frequented the Elysée-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette, and Le Mirliton where he exhibited some of his works. He participated in the Salon des Artistes Incohérents and worked with several Parisian periodicals drawing humorous and ambient scenes. He became friends with Vincent Van Gogh. Between 1887 and 1895 he traveled a great deal and participated in many exhibitions in Toulouse, Brussels and Paris. These were tumultuous years, even in his personal life: he frequented night clubs –he designed the poster for the opening of the Moulin Rouge in 1889 – and brothels that became prime subjects of his works. In 1895 he worked with La revue blanche and the Natansons; he designed theater programs and worked for several magazines. He alternated painting with lithography and between 1896 and 1898 he published three albums that were not very successful. In 1899 he was hospitalized for alcoholism in Dr. Sémelaigne’s sanatorium in Neuilly where he did some drawings on circus themes. When he returned to Paris he resumed his disorderly lifestyle. In December 1900 following a congestion he became paralyzed from the waist down, to recover after electrical treatment. After a brief sojourn in Bordeaux where he did some paintings inspired by the opera Messalina, he returned to Paris in 1901. His health continued to deteriorate and he was moved to the Chateau de Malromé where he died on 9 September at the age of thirty-seven. His remains were transferred from Sant-André-du-Bois to Vederlais.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: the works
Le jeune Routy à Céleyran (The Young Routy at Céleyran)
1882During the summer of 1882 the young Toulouse-Lautrec spent some time at the Céleyran family estate. Here, under the guidance of Cormon he concentrated on life painting in an attempt to penetrate the peasant environment that was so distant from his own. The artist met a young farmer, Routy, and used him in several paintings. He was doing both a study of the social class - the field hand - as well as a psychological analysis of the character, a poor, introverted farm boy with whom he established a strong friendship. Of the few paintings that Lautrec did outdoors, these portraits show how close he actually was to the Impressionist modes, especially in the color range and accentuated luminosity.
Mme la Comtesse A. de Toulouse-Lautrec
1883Toulouse-Lautrec painted his mother several times between 1879 and 1886, using different formats, techniques and styles. The Albi portrait that he painted when he was only twenty years old is one of the most successful from this period. The intonation is serious and free of rhetoric, the setting is the home – very simple and elegant. The countess, seated at a table with a porcelain cup is transformed into a solemn, stately figure because of the stiffness of the pose and absent, mysterious expression. The frontal view and the image that is created by masses of softly shaded colors that shape the design in space seem to recall portraits by Cézanne.
La Cavallerie (In The Circus Fernando the Ringmaster)
1887-1888Toulouse-Lautrec showed this painting along with nine others, including the portrait of his mother at the fifth exhibition of «Les XX» in Brussels in 1888. On the left we see the ringmaster, Monsieur Loyal, on the right the rider who is about to jump through a hoop that a clown holds in the background. There is a small ink sketch of the ringmaster of this painting and a pastel, the artist’s favorite medium in this period. The figures are brightly colored with tensely outlined silhouettes. The use of oils with watercolor shading lets the drawing beneath show through: the artist did not even erase his changes, pencil marks or overrunning colors. The painting was purchased by the proprietor of the Moulin Rouge and was displayed in the foyer were Seurat saw it and found the inspiration for Le Cirque that he did a few years later.
Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge
1887-1888Set in the famous Parisian cabaret, Lautrec portrays a colorful audience in a lively dance. In the foreground there is a couple watching the show and at the same time they are part of the scene, like a Chinese puzzle. In this painting the artist refined the compositional arrangement that he would often use in the future: the figures are cut by the edges of the painting like a poorly framed photograph and they seem to tell the viewer that life continues beyond the limits of the picture.
A la mie
1891This painting, inspired by the degraded environment of the urban proletariat was deliberately done with a careless brushstroke to lend more reality to the squalor of the shabbily dressed couple of uncertain age, whose gaze is clouded by alcohol. Rather than conveying an impression of immediacy and spontaneity of execution, this painting is the fruit of careful preparation; it portrays a stereotype rather than a specific setting. The confirmation comes from a photograph of the scene, so it was done in the artist’s studio rather than “in loco.” In open debate with the excesses of naturalism that were in vogue during the period, Lautrec emphasizes the sad squalor of the setting and the exaggerated features of the subjects.
At the Moulin Rouge
1892-1894The artist portrayed some of his friends seated at a table in the famous Parisian cabaret. He himself is in the background next to his cousin Tapié de Céleyran. The woman in front of the mirror is Goulue, and the seated figures from left to right are, Edouard Dujardin, Macarona, Paul Sescau, Maurice Guibert and a redheaded woman whom some have identified as Jane Avril. In the foreground there is an unsettling face, illuminated by a pale green light. The precisely drawn faces contrast with the background and the balustrade in the foreground that are barely sketched in with quick, imprecise brushstrokes that do not completely cover the painting. The elaborate spatial arrangement is resolved by the lines of the balustrade and floor that create a sort of “V” drawing the viewer’s gaze to the group in the middle.
At the Nouveau Cirque: Five Stuffed Shirts
1892 circaIn 1895 Louis Comfort Tiffany, the inventor of the new colored “Favrile glass” used this painting for the stained glass composition Au Nouveau Cirque, Papa Chrysanthème (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) that he exhibited in Paris that same year, first at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and then at Sigfried Bing’s first Salon de l’Art Nouveau. The study that cleverly combines suggestions of Japanese art with the language of Art Nouveau is based on a scene from Papa Chrysanthème a very successful show watched by an elegantly dressed lady. A dancer plays the part of the western lover of a Japanese prince. Through her dancing she wants to gain the sympathy of court – the five men aligned in the background wearing the white shirtfronts that give the painting its title.
The Moulin Rouge
1892Toulouse-Lautrec loved dance halls, cafés and cabarets. He effectively portrayed the patrons of the nightspots, revealing their attitudes and habits. The “casual” layout in which the figures are cut off by the edges in a sort of poorly framed photograph seems to fulfill a specific expressive goal as if the artist wanted to show that life goes on beyond the outlines of the painting, that time and motion do not stop outside the frame. The technique in this painting is unusual: it is a combination of oils, pastel and pencil with turpentine used as a diluent afterward.
L’Anglais du Moulin Rouge
1892Lautrec grasps the “naughty” and sensual atmosphere of the meeting of an elegant gentleman and two unknown women in the famous Parisian cabaret. As always, with admirable skill he limits himself to recording what subtly takes place in the dancehalls where the rich bourgeois men accost young, available girls. The male figure is William Warrener the artist’s friend and fellow painter who had come to Paris from his native England and was enjoying considerable success. The artist did a superb, extremely simplified brush and spray lithograph based on this painting, and there is also a black water colored version by Lautrec as well. The photograph-like close-up deceives the viewer who seems to enter the scene and participate in the conversation.
Au Salon de la rue des Moulins (At the Salon)br>1894 circa
A habitué of brothers, Henri portrays the everyday lives of the girls without any trace of vulgarity. The joyless, oppressive atmosphere of the houses was actually much less exciting than commonly believed, so the artificially exotic atmosphere contracts with the inertia and boredom of the prostitutes who passively await the clients under the watchful eyes of the maîtresse. The central figure in this painting is Lautrec’s favorite, Mireille, who worked in the house on rue Amboise. He painted the scene from memory on the basis of many studies and sketches, having worked at length on the elaborate construction and choice of colors. He was proud of this work that the critics considered the apex of a series of paintings on the theme of prostitution. He had himself photographed in front of the canvas alongside of the nude model, holding a lance, perhaps to ridicule the historic paintings that were still highly favored by the official salons.
Yvette Guilbert saluant le publique
1894As a young girl Yvette Guilbert (1868-1944) worked as a salesclerk at the Printemps stores. Later she became a singer and soon rose to stardom at the Moulin Rouge and the Divan Japonais. The black gloves she wore all the time became her trademark and here she is portrayed singing the popular song Linger Longer Loo. Lautrec painted her several times and dedicated an album and several posters to her. This piece reveals the artist’s innate instinct for the caricature that led him to develop his own, totally anti-academic language.
La Goulue and Valentin-le-Désossé
1895The characters in this painting are two famous stars of the Moulin Rouge: Goulue and Valentin-le-Désossé, whom Lautrec had already painted in 1891 poster. Goulue (which means “glutton”) was an Alsatian laundress who became a dancer and actress in the ‘eighties. Because of her insatiable appetite she became fat and fatigued and was forced to leave the stage and open a booth at the Foire du Trone (1895). Valentin-le-Désossé came from a wealthy family of notaries. A sophisticated viveur who loved to ride and dance, he became the first male lead dancer in the main Parisian cabarets. In a letter dated 1895 Goulue asked the artist, for the sake of their old friendship, to help her with her new business and decorate the entrance to the booth. Lautrec painted two panels: one of Goulue and Valentin dancing at the Moulin Rouge and the other of Goulue doing a belly dance.