Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
The nightlife of Montmartre.
Toulouse-Lautrec painted the Moulin Rouge, dancers and brothels. His posters turned advertising into art.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in 1864 in Albi in southern France into an old aristocratic family. His parents were cousins, and he probably suffered from a hereditary bone disease. As a teenager he broke both thighbones, and his legs then stopped growing. As an adult he was about 150 centimetres tall. Unable to lead the life of hunting and riding expected of his class, he turned to art instead.
He studied in Paris under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon. In Cormon’s studio he met Vincent van Gogh and Émile Bernard, among others. He settled in Montmartre, where he lived in the thick of the entertainment world of cabarets, dance halls, circuses and brothels. He drew and painted the people there with an eye that was sharp but seldom contemptuous.
The Moulin Rouge dance hall opened in 1889. His poster Moulin Rouge – La Goulue of 1891 made him famous overnight. He used colour lithography and drew inspiration from Japanese woodcuts, with flat areas of colour, clear outlines and bold cropping. He created posters for performers such as Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant and helped to make the poster an art form. The painting At the Moulin Rouge of 1892–1895 is in the Art Institute of Chicago.
He also painted a series of pictures from the brothels, depicting the women’s everyday lives without sensationalism. The Salon in the Rue des Moulins of 1894 is in the museum in Albi. He was extremely productive, and in barely twenty years he created hundreds of paintings, some 350 prints and thousands of drawings.
Toulouse-Lautrec drank heavily and suffered from syphilis. In 1899 he was admitted to a clinic, where he drew a series of circus pictures from memory to prove that he was sane. He died in 1901 at the family château of Malromé, aged only 36. His mother helped to found the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi. His prints influenced both advertising and young artists such as Picasso.