150th Birthday of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

This morning, sitting here in Celestun with my coffee, Google alerted me to the fact that today would be Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s 150th birthday, had the bohemian artist not died in his 30s.  The French artist, who is best known for his painted scenes of wild, bohemian Parisian nightlife, including his posters for the opening of the Moulin Rouge.  I shot this photo of the famous Moulin Rouge while in Paris last year.

The Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec – along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – is among the most well-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period.

At age twelve Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at fourteen his right leg. The bones did not heal properly, and his legs ceased to grow. He reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 4 1/2 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

Toulouse-Lautrec was drawn to Montmartre, the area of Paris famous for its bohemian lifestyle and the haunt of artists, writers, and philosophers.  When the Moulin Rouge cabaret opened, Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to produce a series of posters. Other artists looked down on the work, but Henri was so aristocratic he did not care. The cabaret reserved a seat for him and displayed his paintings.

Toulouse-Lautrec was very much an active part of this community. He would sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, meanwhile making swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into brightly colored paintings. In order to join in the Montmartre life - as well as to fortify himself against the crowd's ridicule of his appearance - Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink heavily.

Throughout his career, which spanned less than 20 years, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works.

 

An alcoholic for most of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec was placed in a sanatorium shortly before his death. He died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé at the age of 36.

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris