“I paint things as they are. I don’t comment. I record.”
-Toulouse Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, was born on November 24, 1864 in Albi, France. He was an aristocrat, the son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse and last in line of a family that dated back a thousand years. Henri’s father was rich, handsome, and eccentric. His mother was very devoted to her only living child.
At age 13 he fractured his right leg and at 14 he fractured his left leg. The bones did not set properly and ceased to grow any more. Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in art. He became an important Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, and, through his works, recorded many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style, which is highly linear and emphasizes contour. Many of his works may be best described as “drawings in coloured paint.”
Over his twenty year career, Toulouse-Lautrec created: 737 paintings on canvas, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings as well as some ceramic and stained glass work.