DiscoverFrance! home page

Recommend Us! Guest Book Advertising Web Hosting Site Map Help! E-mail

.

Culture, history,
language, travel,
and more!

.
.
GO!
Pull down window to select topic, then click GO!

 

Art History Webmasters Association

Enter your e-mail address to receive updates about
DiscoverFrance.net!

World Wide Arts Resources

Search terms:

In Association with Amazon.com

Bonjour!

Vote for this website!

DISCOVER FRANCE
TRAVEL CENTER

Airline Tickets

Car Rentals

Currency

Hotels, Condos

Medical

Rail Passes

This menu is powered
by Agum Network

Search this site

Click above to
search this site
or the Internet.

Visit our Boutique!

Click above
to visit our
Boutique!

Music while you browse

Click above for
optional background
music while you browse!

Random quote generator

Click above to see
random quotations!

visiteur numéro

E-stat

Art Boutique - a Supergallery for French Art Prints and Framing
PLEASE VISIT OUR ART BOUTIQUE TO PURCHASE LAUTREC PRINTS


HENRI de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

Aristide BruantHenri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec {too-looz'-loh-trek'}, b. Albi, France, Nov. 24, 1864, was a leading postimpressionist artist whose paintings, lithography, and posters contributed much to the development of Art Nouveau in the 1890s. He was also a harsh and witty chronicler of the gaudy nightlife and the sordid elements of late-19th-century Parisian society.

A sickly and sheltered child of an aristocratic family, Toulouse-Lautrec from an early age concentrated on observing and drawing, rather than participating in, social activities. This tendency toward dispassionate observation was reinforced tragically when two falls (1878-79), abetted by bone disease, resulted in crippling injuries to his legs, which thereafter remained stunted. Jane AvrilA grotesque-looking cripple, with the legs of a boy and the torso of a young man, he concentrated more than ever on developing his career as an artist.

After failing his first baccalaureate examinations and receiving his parents' consent to study art, Toulouse-Lautrec studied (1882) with the academic painter Leon Bonnat and then entered (1883) the atelier of Fernand Cormon, where he befriended such other avant-garde artists as Vincent van Gogh. Dating from this time are several psychologically penetrating portraits, especially of his mother, that show in their color and brushwork his absorption of impressionism. In the later 1880s he was influenced by Japanese prints, whose large areas of a single color and strong contours and patterning he emulated. ToiletteAn even more formative influence on the young artist was the work of Edgar Degas, whose concern with movement and expression Toulouse-Lautrec began to interpret in a way that stressed angular protrusions of the body and outlandish behavior.

He was by this time haunting the dance halls and nightclubs of Montmartre, taking his subjects from his observations of what occurred on stage and among the patrons. To convey the frenetic and artificial atmosphere of these pleasure spots in such works as At the Moulin Rouge (1892; Art Institute of Chicago) and La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge (1892; Museum of Modern Art, New York City), he chose acid and garish colors and adopted a drawing style that is almost grotesque in its exaggerations. Conquete du PassageHe applied the same techniques to the striking posters he designed (1890s) to advertise night spots and to immortalize the style and mannerisms of their most celebrated performers, including the dancers Jane Avril and Loie Fuller and the singers Aristide Bruant and Yvette Guilbert. In creating these famous works Toulouse-Lautrec greatly advanced the art of color lithography. His surviving drawings and sketches for the posters give the effect of speed and casualness, but in fact they represent a painstaking discipline and mastery in their extended use of line and reduction to essentials. The linear and uncluttered appearance of these works, as well as their flat, almost two-dimensional quality, owed much to Japanese art.

Alcoholism led to the failure of his health in 1899, and for the last few years of his life he confined his efforts to painting or drawing circus and jockey scenes from memory. After paralysis struck, Toulouse-Lautrec died at Malrome on Sept. 9, 1901.


Mark Roskill
Source: The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release #9.01, © 1997
Bibliography: J. Adhemar, ed., Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: His Complete Lithographs and Drawings, trans. by M. Alexandre (1965); G. Adriani, Toulouse-Lautrec (1987); D. Cooper, Toulouse-Lautrec (1983); B. Denvir, Toulouse-Lautrec (1991); E. Feinblatt B. and Davis, Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries (1986); J. Frey, Biography of Toulouse-Lautrec (1993); P. Gimferrer, Toulouse-Lautrec (1990); E. Lucie-Smith, Toulouse-Lautrec (1977; repr. 1994); G. Mack, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Biography (1990); Henri Perruchot, Toulouse-Lautrec, trans. by H. Hare (1961); R. Thomson, et al., Toulouse-Lautrec (1991); W. Wittrock, Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Prints (1985).
Images: "Aristide Bruant", "Jane Avril", "Toilette", "Conquête du passage"
Copyrights Notice and Disclaimer: Images of artists' works displayed throughout this site have been obtained from numerous sources, including digital libraries at educational institutions, educational software, and Mark Harden's Artchive. Credit is attributed when known. Some works are considered to be in the public domain, based on current U.S. and international copyright acts. For more information on copyright laws, please refer to the Artists Rights Society and Benedict O'Mahoney's The Copyright Web Site. [See also: DiscoverFrance.net Copyrights.]

Toulouse-Lautrec Links:

  • (under construction)

 

SUGGEST A SITE
Do you know of a great Toulouse-Lautrec site we should list here? Please submit it!

Toulouse-Lautrec Quotations:

"Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge." (1)

Source of Quotation: (1) QuoteWorld.org.

Artists' Pages:

Art Topics:

This menu is powered by Agum Network

Discover France web ring

This ring site owned by DiscoverFrance.net

Features

Books & Videos

Revisit the era of the "Lost Generation" in Hemingway's Paris.

Explore the fascinating history of the prophet from Provence, Nostradamus.

Read the reviews of our carefully selected travel guides and recommended reading, then click to save 20-40% on books you purchase, with the convenience of home delivery.

Can't find your favorite French movies at the video store or library? Check out our selection of videotapes and DVDs featuring French movie icons like Depardieu, Deneuve, Montand, and many more. Then click to save 10-30% on your own personal copy delivered to your door!

Submissions

Host your web page with us!

DiscoverFrance.net actively encourages topical submissions from students of French language & culture, educators, seasoned travelers, American expatriates, and natives of France.

If you would like to share your experiences, knowledge or research with thousands of our visitors and friends, please send a note to the webmaster!

Are you an individual or business with a web page on any topic related to France -- arts, culture, entertainment, history, language, tourism, etc. -- in English or French? Your site can have an address of "www. discoverfrance. net/your_site" for less than $10 per month! Get more hits by affiliating with other francophile sites.

Tired of the Java commercial advertising windows and banners imposed by the so-called "free" web page hosting services? At DiscoverFrance.net, you can customize your page as you wish, without any commercial requirements or programming inserted into your HTML. Our web servers and Internet connections are fast, too.

For more information, please contact our sales staff!


Design and layout © 1997-1999

All Rights Reserved

Comments, suggestions,
broken links?

Made with Macintosh

The Wharton Group
and
Ian C. Mills

e-mail

The Y29K - compliant computer
preferred by designers everywhere.

This site
recycled

recycled

uses
electrons.

E-mail:
webmaster@discoverfrance.net

Text copyrights are attributed to their respective sources throughout this site.