Titans of History

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

1864–1901

He did not overturn reality to discover truth, where there was nothing. He contented himself with looking. He did not see, as many do, what we seem to be, but what we are. Then, with a sureness of hand and a boldness at once sensitive and firm, he revealed us to ourselves.

From Toulouse-Lautrec’s obituary in the Journal de Paris

Vicomte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the iconic chronicler of Parisian nightlife, confronted society with a vibrant celebration of humanity in all its distortions. He is world-famous today principally for his posters, but while these are undeniably superb, they have obscured his brilliance as a painter and portraitist who brought poignant sensitivity to his studies of the women of the demi-monde. In truth he was the Rembrandt of the night.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s art illuminates Paris’s artistic quarter in all its glory, immortalizing the chorus girls and entertainers who crowded its streets, cabarets and cafés. It was a ground-breaking departure in art. His work caused outrage, but he did not do it to shock. Rather, he wanted to “depict the true and not the ideal.” In so doing, he humanized his subjects because they were people he knew so well, giving them a nobility that society had always denied them.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s style—clear, economical lines, bright colors and vigorous, often ironic representations—was as revelatory as his subjects. After he decided to become an artist, his wealthy aristocratic family arranged for him to be tutored by a family friend and society painter. Toulouse-Lautrec developed his distinctive style almost in spite of his training. Notwithstanding his eagerness to please, he found himself unable to copy a model exactly. “In spite of himself,” a friend recalled, “he exaggerated certain details, sometimes the general character, so that he distorted without trying or even wanting to.” A subsequent tutor found this freedom of expression “atrocious.” At age nineteen, he was given an allowance to set up his own studio, whereupon he moved to Montmartre and began to paint his friends.

Toulouse-Lautrec soon became famous for his lithographs. Bold and clear, their elegant style anticipates art nouveau. They showed that art did not have to consist solely of oil on canvas, and as posters they turned advertising into an art form. The vast audience this gave him transformed his career. “My poster is pasted today on the walls of Paris,” he declared proudly of his first lithograph in 1891. His lithographs showed the great singing, dancing and circus stars of the Parisian night, especially the Moulin Rouge: Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret or Moulin Rouge—La Goulue and Jane Avril sortant du Moulin Rouge are now pasted on walls across the world. His paintings are remarkable for their humanity: his debonair boulevardier Louis Pascal shows that he could render men masterfully too, while his study for The Medical Inspection catches the pathos of whores queuing up in the surgery. Some of his most beautiful paintings show these women relaxing together or alone, such as Abandon, the Two Friends or the touching Red Haired Woman Washing. Both the stars and the ordinary girls were his friends and lovers.

Like the rest of his family, Toulouse-Lautrec was enthusiastically sporty, but at the age of thirteen he broke his left thigh bone and a year later his right. Despite a long convalescence and numerous painful treatments, his legs never grew again. With a man’s torso on dwarfish legs, he never exceeded 5ft (1.52m) in height. The cause was a bone disease, probably of genetic origin.

There is a clear irony in the contrast between the energy and physicality of Lautrec’s paintings and his own atrophied state. He was never reconciled to his condition. His compositions often hide the legs of his figures. Surrounded by unusually tall friends, “he often refers to short men,” commented one acquaintance, “as if to say ‘I’m not as short as all that!’” But the “tiny blacksmith with a pince-nez” was under no illusions about himself: “I will always be a thoroughbred hitched to a rubbish cart” was just one of a litany of self-deprecating remarks.

Even in the raffish, boozy world of Montmartre, Lautrec’s alcohol consumption was legendary. He helped to popularize the cocktail. The earthquake—four parts absinthe, two parts red wine and a splash of cognac—was a particular favorite. Syphilis accelerated his physical and mental decline, and when his beloved mother left Paris suddenly in 1899, it precipitated a total mental collapse. He was sent to a sanatorium, where he produced one of his greatest series of drawings, At the Circus. But after a brief spell he returned to Paris.

Toulouse-Lautrec degenerated into a haze of alcohol, the earthquake giving way to an esoteric diet of “eggs, which Monsieur eats raw mixed with rum.” Removed to one of his family’s châteaux, he was reduced to dragging himself along by his arms as his useless legs failed to work. Almost paralyzed and nearly totally deaf, Toulouse-Lautrec was just thirty-six when he died.

“He would have liked the elegant, active life of all healthy sports-loving persons,” wrote his father after his death. His son achieved in art all the vitality missing from his life. The man who did more than any other to create the image of fin de siècle Paris imbued his works with an astounding energy.