ELLES

Cult Art

Fine Art Giclée Print

Co-created and published by PINEAPPLE GALLERY

Print Dimensions: 37cm x 48cm

Original Works: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century. He produced a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times.

At the age of 13, Toulouse-Lautrec fractured his right femur, and at 14, he fractured his left femur. The breaks did not heal properly. Afterward, his legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was extremely short (1.42 m or 4 ft 8 in). He developed an adult-sized torso while retaining his child-sized legs. 

Physically unable to participate in many activities enjoyed by boys his age, Henri immersed himself in art. He became a prominent Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, and, through his works, recorded many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris.

In1882 he established the group of friends he kept for the rest of his life. At this time, he met Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. Cormon, whose instruction was relaxed and allowed his pupils to roam Paris, looking for subjects to paint. During this period, he had his first encounter with a prostitute (reputedly sponsored by his friends), which led him to paint his first painting of a prostitute. He was fascinated by their lifestyle and the lifestyle of the “urban underclass” and incorporated those characters into his paintings.He declared, “A model is always a stuffed doll, but these women are alive. I wouldn’t venture to pay them the hundred sous to sit for me, and god knows whether they would be worth it. They stretch out on the sofas like animals, make no demand and they are not in the least bit conceited.”

When the Moulin Rouge cabaret opened in 1889, Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to produce a series of posters.

Other artists looked down on the work, but he ignored them.

He  was mocked for his short stature and physical appearance and he walked with the aid of a cane, which was hollowed out and kept filled with liquor in order to ensure that he was never without alcohol.

By February 1899, Toulouse-Lautrec’s alcoholism began to take its toll and he collapsed from exhaustion. His family had him committed, he still continued to draw and he completed 39 circus portraits.

On 9 September 1901, at the young age of 36, he died.

He excelled at depicting people in their working environments, with the colour and movement of the gaudy nightlife present but the glamour stripped away.