Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born at the chateau de Malromé near Albi, Tarn in the Pyrenean isthmus, the firstborn child of Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Adèle Tapié de Celeyran. He was therefore a member of an aristocratic family (descendants of the Counts of Toulouse and Lautrec and the Viscounts of Montfa, a village of Tarn. A younger brother was also born to the family on 28 August 1867, but died the following year.
After the death of his brother his parents separated and a nanny took care of Henri through this time. At the age of 8, Henri left to live with his mother in Paris. Here he started to draw his first sketches and caricatures in his exercise workbooks. The family quickly came to realise that Henri's talent lay with drawing and painting, and a friend of his father named Rene Princeteau visited sometimes to give informal lessons. Some of Henri's early paintings are of horses, a speciality of Princeteau, and something that he would later visit with his 'Circus Paintings'.
In 1875 Henri returned to Albi because his mother recognised his health problems. He took thermal baths at Amélie-les-Bains and his mother consulted doctors in the hope of finding a way to improve her son's growth and development.
The Comte and Comtesse themselves were first cousins (Henri's two grandmothers being sisters) and Henri suffered from a number of congenital health conditions attributed to this tradition of
inbreeding.
Jules Chéret and Lautrec with poster
At the age of 13, Henri fractured his right
thigh bone, and at 14, the left. The breaks did not heal properly. Modern physicians attribute this to an unknown
genetic disorder, possibly
pycnodysostosis (also sometimes known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome), or a variant disorder along the lines of
osteopetrosis,
achondroplasia, or
osteogenesis imperfecta.
Rickets aggravated with praecox virilism has also been suggested. His legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was only 1.54 m (5 ft 1 in) tall, having developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, which were 0.70 m (27.5 in) long. He is also reported to have had
hypertrophied genitals.
Physically unable to participate in most of the activities typically enjoyed by men of his age, Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in his art. He became an important
Post-Impressionist painter,
art nouveau illustrator, and
lithographer; and recorded in his works many details of the late-19th-century
bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec also contributed a number of illustrations to the magazine
Le Rire during the mid-1890s.
After initially failing his college entrance exams, Henri passed upon his second attempt and completed his studies. During his stay in
Nice, his progress in painting and drawing impressed Princeteau, who persuaded Henri's parents to let him return to Paris and study under the acclaimed portrait painter
Léon Bonnat. Henri's mother had high ambitions and, with aims of Henri becoming a fashionable and respected painter, she used the family influence to get Henri into Bonnat's studio.
Toulouse-Lautrec was drawn to
Montmartre, an area of Paris famous for its bohemian lifestyle and for being the haunt of artists, writers, and philosophers. Studying with Bonnat placed Henri in the heart of Montmartre, an area that he would rarely leave over the next 20 years. After Bonnat took a new job, Henri moved to the studio of
Fernand Cormon in 1882 and studied for a further five years, here making the group of friends he would keep for the rest of his life. It was at this period in his life he first met
Émile Bernard and
Van Gogh. Cormon, whose instruction was more relaxed than Bonnat's, allowed his pupils to roam Paris, looking for subjects to paint. In this period Toulouse-Lautrec had his first encounter with a prostitute, reputedly sponsored by his friends, and this led him to paint his first painting of the prostitutes of Montmartre, a woman rumoured to be called Marie-Charlotte.
With his studies finished, in 1887 he participated in an exposition in Tolosa under the pseudonym "Tréclau", an anagram of the family name 'Lautrec'. He later exhibited in Paris with
Van Gogh and
Louis Anquetin. The Belgian critic
Octave Maus invited him to present eleven pieces at the Vingt (the Twenties) exhibition in Brussels in February. The brother of
Vincent van Gogh,
Theo van Gogh bought 'Poudre de Riz' (Rice Powder) at the price of 150 francs for the
Goupil & Cie gallery.
From 1889 until 1894, Henri took part in the "
Independent Artists' Salon" on a regular basis. He made several landscapes of Montmartre. It was in this era that the 'Moulin Rouge' opened. Tucked deep into Montmartre was the garden of Monsieur Pere Foret, where Toulouse-Lautrec executed a series of pleasant
plein-air paintings of Carmen Gaudin, the same red-head model who appears in
The Laundress (1888). When the nearby
Moulin Rouge cabaret opened its doors, Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to produce a series of posters. His mother had left Paris and while Henri still had a regular income from his family, making posters offered him a living of his own. Other artists looked down on the work, but Henri was so aristocratic he did not care. Thereafter, the cabaret reserved a seat for him, and displayed his paintings. Among the well known works that he painted for the Moulin Rouge and other Parisian nightclubs are depictions of the singer
Yvette Guilbert; the dancer Louise Weber, known as the outrageous
La Goulue ("The Glutton"), who created the "
French Can-Can"; and the much more subtle dancer
Jane Avril.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from a family of Anglophiles, and while he wasn't as fluent as he pretended to be, he spoke English well enough to travel to London. The business of making posters led Henri to London, gaining him work that led to the making of the 'Confetti' poster, and the bicycle advert 'La Chaîne Simpson'.
It was during his time in London that he met and befriended
Oscar Wilde, and when Wilde faced imprisonment in Britain, Henri was a very vocal supporter. Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Wilde was done the same year as Wilde's trial.
Lautrec was often mocked for his short stature and physical appearance, and this led him to drown his sorrows in alcohol. At first this was just beer and wine, but his tastes quickly expanded. He was one of the notable Parisians who enjoyed American style cocktails. 1893 saw Lautrec's alcoholism begin to take its toll, and as those around him began to realise the seriousness of his condition there were rumours of a syphilis infection. Finally, in 1899, his mother and a group of concerned friends had him briefly institutionalised. He had even gone to the length of having a cane that he could hide alcohol in so he could have a drink on him at all times.
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. He is buried in
Verdelais, Gironda, a few kilometres from the
Château Malromé, where he died.
Toulouse-Lautrec's last words reportedly were: "Le vieux con!" ("The old fool!", although the word "con" can be meant in both simple and vulgar terms). This was his goodbye to his father. Although another version has him saying, using the word "hallali" which is used by huntsmen for the moment the hounds kill their prey, "I knew, papa, that you wouldn't miss the death." ("Je savais, papa, que vous ne manqueriez pas l'hallali").
After Toulouse-Lautrec's death, his mother, the Comtesse Adèle Toulouse-Lautrec, and Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, promoted his art. His mother contributed funds for a museum to be created in
Albi, his birthplace, to house his works. The
Toulouse-Lautrec Museum now owns the world's largest collection of works by the painter.
Throughout his career, which spanned fewer 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. His debt to the
Impressionists, in particular the more figurative painters
Manet and
Degas, is apparent. His style was also influenced by the classical
Japanese woodprints which became popular in art circles in Paris. In the works of Toulouse-Lautrec can be seen many parallels to Manet's detached barmaid at
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the behind-the-scenes ballet dancers of Degas. He excelled at capturing people in their working environment, with the colour and the movement of the gaudy night-life present but the glamour stripped away. He was masterly at capturing crowd scenes in which the figures are highly individualized. At the time that they were painted, the individual figures in his larger paintings could be identified by silhouette alone, and the names of many of these characters have been recorded. His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, scenes of Parisian night-life, or intimate studies, has been described as both sympathetic and dispassionate.
Toulouse-Lautrec's skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style which is highly linear and gives great emphasis to contour. He often applied the paint in long, thin brushstrokes which would often leave much of the board on which they are painted showing through. Many of his works may best be described as drawings in coloured paint.
La Toilette, early painting
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Portrait of Gabrielle (1891)
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At the Circus Fernando (1888)
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Portrait of Gabrielle (1891)
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La Goulue arriving at the Moulin Rouge (1892)
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At the Moulin Rouge: Two Women Waltzing (1892)
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Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge (1892)
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Jane Avril Dancing (1892)
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Salon at the Rue des Moulins (1894)
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The Medical Inspection at the Rue des Moulins Brothel (1894)
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Ambassadeurs – Aristide Bruant (1892)
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Reine de Joie (1892)
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Divan Japonais (1892-1893)
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The Photographer Sescau (1894)
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The German Babylon (1894)
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The Signature of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Coat of arms of the Counts of Pallars.
