Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1864 - 1901 • French • Painter/Print Maker • Art Nouveau

"What a crush! ... A burly-burly of gloved hands carrying pince-nez framed in tortoise-shell or gold. ... Here are some observations I made among all those elbows." - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec's flattened, outlined figures in bold colors-especially those in posters for the Moulin Rouge and to advertise the famous, provocative dancer Jane Avril, his constant companion- are well known. So is the fact that he was a dwarf who passed his time in Montmartre's seedy underworld of prostitution and alcoholism. He recorded the degradation of that culture with sensitivity: Rue des Mou/ins (1894), with harsh brushstrokes in a cacophony of reds, browns, lavender, and greenish tones, is a vulgar scene of prostitutes standing in line, holding up their skirts as they await their medical examinations. Without being either lascivious or maudlin, the artist has painted this odd scene so that the viewer is left feeling sympathetic rather than offended. Toulouse-Lautrec mixed in the "crush" of the horse races, the theater, cabarets, and brothels, and was, because of his size, in truth "among all those elbows," as he says in the quotation above. He was described by a French singer as "the genius of deformity," and from his vantage point he saw a sordid world and participated in it, destroying himself through dissipation.