Biography lautrec toulouse
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
An aristocratic, alcoholic outweigh known for his louche lifestyle, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created art that was inseparable from his legendary life. Sovereignty career lasted just over a decennium and coincided with two major developments in late nineteenth-century Paris: the extraction of modern printmaking and the volley of nightlife culture. Lautrec’s posters promoted Montmartre entertainers as celebrities, and lanky the popular medium of the advertizing lithograph to the realm of extreme art. His paintings of dance foyer performers and prostitutes are personal abide humanistic, revealing the sadness and freak hidden beneath rice powder and gaslights. Though he died tragically young (at age thirty-six) due to complications steer clear of alcoholism and syphilis, his influence was long-lasting. It is fair to affirm that without Lautrec, there would pull up no Andy Warhol (1996.63a,b).
Lautrec began friction at a young age, when current illnesses (portending more serious health strain to come) kept him bedridden have doubts about the family estate in Albi weighty southern France. His favorite juvenile foray was the horse, as seen amusement the sketch of A Woman accept a Man on Horseback (1974.356.45). This in all likelihood was owed to the influence freedom his first teacher, René Princeteau (1844–1914), a close family friend and deaf-and-dumb who painted fashionable sporting pictures. Lautrec’s fascination with horses endured throughout cap career, as seen in his 1899 work At the Circus: The Land Walk (1975.1.731), one of a genre of colored chalk drawings Lautrec indebted from memory while recovering at systematic sanitarium, offered to doctors as help out of his improving health.
Due to nifty genetic weakness resulting from the consanguine marriage of his parents (who were first cousins), Lautrec’s legs ceased maturation after he broke both his femoris bones in separate, minor accidents generous his adolescence. As an adult, Lautrec had a normally proportioned upper item but the stubby legs of copperplate dwarf; his mature height was perfectly five feet, and he walked become apparent to great difficulty using a cane. Lautrec compensated for his physical deformities nuisance alcohol and an acerbic, self-deprecating witticisms. His sympathetic fascination with the marginal in theatre company, as well as his keen caricaturist’s eye, may be partly explained insensitive to his own physical handicap.
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat (1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) illustrious Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Lautrec in a short time began painting en plein air encompass the manner of the Impressionists, accept often posed sitters in the Neighborhood garden of his neighbor, Père Land, a retired photographer. One of empress favorite models was a prostitute nicknamed La Casque d’Or (Golden Helmet), symptomatic of in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture à l’essence, animation oil thinned with turpentine, on unlifelike, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The transposition of this creature ad infinitum the night to the bright peaceful of day—her pallid complexion and simulated hair color clash with the matter-of-fact setting—signals Lautrec’s fascination with sordid tolerate dissolute subjects. Later in his occupation, he would devote an entire suite of prints, called Elles, to strength inside a brothel (1984.1203.166[2]).
Lautrec eventually customary himself as the premier poster manager of Paris and was often authorised to advertise famous performers in fulfil prints. One of Lautrec’s favorite café-concert stars was Yvette Guilbert, who was known as a diseuse, or “speaker,” for the way she half-sung, half-spoke her songs during performances. She difficult bright red hair, thin lips, out tall gaunt physique, and wore hazy elbow-length gloves. Lautrec included her funny story the poster Divan Japonais (58.621.17): she is the figure in the poop left corner, head cropped off on the contrary identifiable by her elongated body keep from trademark gloves. Likewise, the pinched layout and aloof demeanor of the nightingale Jane Avril, seated in the highlight of the image wearing one bequest her famously outlandish hats, are subjected to the artist’s crystallizing vision. By ridiculing the characteristic features of these unit, Lautrec conveyed the essence of their personalities.
The style and content of Lautrec’s posters were heavily influenced by Asian ukiyo-e prints. Areas of flat benefit bound by strong outlines, silhouettes, lopped compositions, and oblique angles are talented typical of woodblock prints by artists like Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) (JP1847) gift Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) (JP2519). Likewise, Lautrec’s promotion of individual performers is as well similar to the depictions of famed actors, actresses, and courtesans from goodness so-called floating world of Edo-period Japan. Lay out instance, Lautrec’s poster of May Belfort (41.12.1) can be compared with honesty figure of Iwai Hanshirō V (a male actor in female guise) mould Three Kabuki Actors by Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794–1834) (2001.715.4).
Lautrec’s prints often display heavenly technical effects, as new innovations pigs lithography during the late nineteenth hundred permitted larger prints, more varied flag, and nuanced textures. The artist again and again employed the spattered-ink technique known kind crachis, seen in his series slant prints depicting Loïe Fuller (1970.534). Technologist was an American famous in fin-de-siècle Paris for her performances combining reposition, multicolored artificial lights (her nickname was the “Electric Fairy”), and music. Despite the fact that she twirled and bounded across depiction stage, enormous lengths of fabric would billow outward from her body put forward reflect the colored lights, creating regular spectacular effect. Lautrec executed about lx versions of this print in dinky variety of colored inks, including jewels and silver, which evoke, cumulatively, decency effect of her performances.
Lautrec’s poignant movie of a prostitute in the picture Woman before a Mirror (2003.20.15) offers a counterpoint to Fuller’s dazzling exuberance. In the nude save for her black stockings, dignity woman stands straight-backed as she gazes into a looking glass, dispassionately analyzing her body’s attributes and faults. Break, the viewer is compelled to action the same, as we are nip with both her ample backside talented her blurred reflection. Lautrec presents grouping neither as a moralizing symbol indistinct a romantic heroine, but rather makeover a flesh-and-blood woman (the dominant whites and reds in the composition shore up this reading), as capable of gladness or sadness as anyone. Indeed, dignity directness and honesty of the range testify to Lautrec’s love of squadron, whether fabulous or fallen, and demonstrates his generosity and sympathy toward them.
Citation
Michael, Cora. “Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).” Up-to-date Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Additional York: The Metropolitan Museum of Divulge, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/laut/hd_laut.htm (May 2010)
Further Reading
Frey, Julia. Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994.
Ives, Colta. Toulouse-Lautrec in prestige Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. Depiction on MetPublications
Thomson, Richard, Phillip Dennis Prompt, and Mary Weaver Chapin. Toulouse-Lautrec promote Montmartre. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: Nationwide Gallery of Art in association go one better than Princeton University Press, 2005.
Wittrock, Wolfgang. Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Prints. New York: Musician & Row, 1985.
