Aristocrat of Montmartre who drew nightlife without flattery
Comte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 24 November 1864 to 9 September 1901, turned Paris cabarets into modern graphic legend. Adolescent femur fractures left him short-statured; brothel and dance-hall rooms became his studio, and posters made Aristide Bruant's world inescapable.
He was born in Albi in southern France, first child of Count Alphonse and Adele Tapie de Celeyran, who were first cousins; that inbreeding has often been blamed for his health problems. A younger brother born in 1867 died the next year, after which his parents separated. From the age of eight he lived with his mother in Paris, filling school exercise books with caricatures, while his father's friend Rene Princeteau, a specialist in horses, gave him informal lessons.
At thirteen he broke his right thigh bone and a year later his left, and neither healed well. Doctors today suspect an inherited condition, perhaps pycnodysostosis. His legs stopped growing at about 1.52 metres, leaving an adult torso on a child's limbs. Princeteau, impressed by his progress during a stay in Nice, persuaded the family to let him study in Paris, and in 1882 he joined Leon Bonnat's studio before moving on to Fernand Cormon's, where he spent five years and met Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh.
From 1885 he showed work at Aristide Bruant's cabaret, the Mirliton, and that same year began a relationship with Suzanne Valadon, whom he painted several times. In 1887 he exhibited in Toulouse as Treclau, a back-to-front play on Lautrec. Octave Maus brought eleven of his pieces to the Les XX show in Brussels in 1888, and Theo van Gogh paid 150 francs for Rice Powder. At a Les XX banquet in 1890 he challenged the painter Henry de Groux to a duel for insulting Vincent's work; de Groux apologised instead.
Brothels, especially one on the Rue d'Amboise, supplied subjects for about a hundred drawings and fifty paintings, including the Le Lit series of 1892 and 1893. He preferred these women to hired models, whom he dismissed as stuffed dolls. Heavy drinking accompanied his later years, and he died in September 1901, aged thirty-six.
Source: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
