Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French postimpressionist painter, lithographer, and illustrator, documented the bohemian nightlife of late-19th-century Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi into one of the oldest aristocratic families. By the time he was 10 he had begun to draw and paint. At 12 young Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at 14 his right leg. The bones failed to heal properly, and his legs stopped growing. During his convalescence, his mother encouraged him to paint. He subsequently studied with French academic painters L. J. F. Bonnat and Fernand Cormon.
He stayed in the Montmartre section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he loved to paint. Circuses, dance halls, nightclubs, racetracks and Parisian brothels—all these spectacles were set down on canvas or made into lithographs. Toulouse-Lautrec preserved his impressions of these places and their celebrities in portraits and sketches of striking originality and power.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s oeuvre includes great numbers of paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, and posters, as well as illustrations for various contemporary newspapers. His alcoholic dissipation, however, eventually brought on a paralytic stroke, to which he succumbed.
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de
1960 Original Lithographic Poster 29.5 x 21 in. SOLD1949 Original Lithographic Poster 16 x 20 in SOLD1971 Original Lithographic Poster 28 x 18 ½ in SOLD1955 Poster 22 ½ x 30 ¾ in SOLDHe stayed in the Montmartre section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he loved to paint. Circuses, dance halls, nightclubs, racetracks and Parisian brothels—all these spectacles were set down on canvas or made into lithographs. Toulouse-Lautrec preserved his impressions of these places and their celebrities in portraits and sketches of striking originality and power.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s oeuvre includes great numbers of paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, and posters, as well as illustrations for various contemporary newspapers. His alcoholic dissipation, however, eventually brought on a paralytic stroke, to which he succumbed.