Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec

Biography

Wire of Alphonse, count Alphonse of Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (1838-1913) and Adele Tapié de Celeyran (1841-1930), it grows with the Château Malromé.

Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec was born in one from the oldest families from France, indeed going down in right-hand side line from the Counts de Toulouse, which were until XIIIe century among most powerful feudal of the kingdom. However, this branch junior, in spite of her famous name, lives only like one easy family of the aristocracy of province.

At the 19th century, the marriages in the nobility were usually made between cousins in order to avoid the division of the inheritances and the diminution of fortune. It was the case of the parents of Henri, Alphonse of Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Adèle Tapié de Celeyran, who were first cousins. Henri was the elder one; four years later was born his/her Richard-Constantine brother, who died one year afterwards.

The mutual incompatibility between the two husbands involved their separation in 1861 and Henri remained under the guard of his mother. He had a happy childhood until the moment when, in consequence of the consanguinity of his/her parents, in 1874 a disease began which affected the development of the bones, the Pycnodysostose. Its bones were fragile and between May 1878 and August 1879, he suffered from a fracture to the femur with each leg, the left then the line, which prevented it from growing more and did not allow him that a size of 1,44 Mr. One tried to cure it by means of electric shocks and while placing to him at each foot a great quantity of lead. Its trunk was of a normal size but its head had a thick lips and nose. He dribbled and lisped while speaking. He played about it, made the agitator in the living rooms. He was made photograph naked on the beach of Trouville-on-Sea as a child of bearded chorus, or with the boa of Jane April (known as “mélinite”), while being very conscious of faintness that its Exhibitionnisme caused.

In July 1881 Henri fails the baccalaureat with Paris, but is received with Toulouse with the session of October. At this point in time it decided to become artist. Supported by his uncle Charles and Rene Princeteau, friend of his father and animalist painter, it ends up convincing his mother. Of return to Paris, it returns visit to Rene Princeteau, in his workshop to the 233, of the Rue of the Suburb-Saint-Honore.

Incompetent to take part in the activities which a normal body would have allowed, Toulouse-Lautrec lived for his Article It became a painter of the Post-impressionnisme, an illustrator of the Art nouveau and a remarkable lithographer; he crunched the lifestyle of Bohemian Parisian at the end of the XIXe century. In the middle of the Years 1890, it contributed by illustrations to the humorous weekly magazine the Laughter . One regarded it as “the heart of Montmartre”, the Parisian district where he lived. Its paintings depict the life with the Moulin-Rouge and in other cabarets and theaters Montmartrean or Parisian, as in the closed houses which he attended (and where perhaps he contracted the Syphilis). Two of the well-known women that it represented were the singer Yvette Guilbert, and Louise Weber, more known like Goulue, eccentric dancer who created the “Cancan”.

Toulouse-Lautrec gave courses of painting, and he encouraged the efforts of Suzanne Valadon, one of his models which was probably its mistress.

Alcoholic during most of his life of adult, it entered a Sanatorium little before his death in Malromé, the family property, following complications due to alcoholism and syphilis, with nearly 37 years. He is buried in Verdelais (the Gironde) a few kilometres from Malromé.

Its last words were “Old imbecile! ” addressed to his/her father who was present at the time of his death; he would have also said, referring to the tastes of this odd and impassioned aristocrat of hunting: “I knew that you would not miss the hallali”.

After the death of Toulouse-Lautrec, his/her mother like Maurice Joyant, her merchant of tables, wanted to emphasize her work, the countess of Toulouse-Lautrec gave the funds so that a museum was built with Albi, city where was born the artist.

It is said that Toulouse-Lautrec is a brilliant artist by which the remarkable capacities of observation were accompanied by a major sympathy towards humanity. It forever let see some regret that it was because of its deformity. He lived his life fully, was made many friends and was always accepted in spite of his skimped size.

Until 2005, the sale of its paintings did not produce less than 14.5 million American dollars.

Its role is played by John Leguizamo in the film Moulin-Rouge, it is also interpreted by Régis Royer in the film " Lautrec" , realized by Roger Planchon and nominated three times into 1999 in Césars.

Its art

In spite of a life short and marked by the disease, the work of the painter was very vast: the Catalog reasoned of its works published in 1971 enumerates 737 paintings, 275 watercolours, 369 lithographies (including the posters) and approximately 5.000 drawings.

In its youth the horses constituted for him a usual subject. Since childhood he liked the horsemanship and duty to give up it because of its disease was for him something of very painful, and this is why he decided to continue to make live in his works his passion for the horses.

At the beginning of its career it painted some naked masculines like exercises, but its best naked represents women. In general he preferred to start from outlines, but much of its naked must be made according to nature. Usually its models are not beautiful young girls, but women who start to age. To paint this kind of tables it took as a starting point Edgar Degas.

It did not cease drawing: some drawings are works in themselves, but much are outlines for paintings or lithographies. Sometimes its drawings resembled caricatures which, in some features, returned a gesture or an expression; to carry them out it employed various means (pencil, Encre, Pastel and Fusain).

Not needing to carry out works on order, Lautrec chose subjects which he knew well or of the faces which interested it and, as he attended people of any kind, his tables cover a vast range of social classes: noble and artists, writers and sportsmen, doctors, nurses and picturesque figures of Montmartre. Many of its tables show prostitutes because he regarded them as ideal models for the spontaneousness with which they could be driven, whom they naked or with half were equipped. It painted their life with curiosity, but without moralism nor sentimentalism and, especially, without seeking to allot the least attractive character to them.

Paintings

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