Aristocrat, painter and printmaker who moved to Montmartre in the 1880s and made its nightlife his single subject. His 1891 Moulin Rouge poster of the dancer La Goulue changed what a poster could be; he died at thirty-six leaving more than five thousand drawings.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from one of the oldest noble families in France and spent his working life in the dance halls, cabarets and brothels of Montmartre, painting the performers as they actually looked. When the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889 it hung his painting in the foyer and kept a table for him; his 1891 poster of the dancer La Goulue mid-kick, the crowd reduced to a black silhouette, was pasted three thousand times across Paris and made him famous overnight.
Two teenage leg fractures that never healed — the result of a genetic bone disorder, his parents being first cousins — left him an adult of about five feet, with a man's torso on a child's legs. In Montmartre the aristocrat with the sketchbook became part of the furniture of the night he recorded: Aristide Bruant's cabaret, the cancan lines, the maisons closes, and the drink that killed him at thirty-six.
Toulouse-Lautrec was born on 24 November 1864 in Albi, in the south-west, to the comte and comtesse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa — first cousins whose marriage carried a genetic bone disorder to their son. At thirteen he broke his right femur, at fourteen the left; neither healed properly, his legs stopped growing, and he reached an adult height of about five feet. Painting and drawing, a family hobby, became the thing he could do.[1]
He moved to Paris in 1882, at seventeen, to train under the portraitist Léon Bonnat, then spent five years in Fernand Cormon's studio, where the students beside him included Vincent van Gogh — whose portrait he drew in pastel in 1887 — and Émile Bernard. By the mid-1880s he had his own studio in Montmartre, at the corner of the rue Tourlaque and the rue Caulaincourt, and had stopped going home at night.[2]
In 1885 he met Suzanne Valadon, an acrobat turned artists' model who was teaching herself to draw between sittings. She modelled for him, they were lovers, and the relationship ended around her suicide attempt in 1888. He was among the first to take her own drawings seriously.[2]
The Moulin Rouge opened at the foot of the Butte in October 1889, and Toulouse-Lautrec belonged to it from the first season: the management bought his painting of a circus rider for the foyer and kept him a table. In 1891 it commissioned a poster from him — his first — to announce the new season and its star, the cancan dancer Louise Weber, called La Goulue, the Glutton.[3]
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue compressed everything he had learned from Japanese prints and Degas into a design a passer-by could read in a second: the dancer's white blouse mid-kick, her partner Valentin le Désossé sketched grey in the foreground, the audience one flat black band. Three thousand copies were pasted up in the last days of 1891 and Paris took notice of the form itself — the poster became art criticism's business, and Lautrec its most argued-over maker. He produced around thirty more.[4]
The most famous after La Goulue served Aristide Bruant, the singer whose cabaret Le Mirliton Lautrec drank at and drew for. When the smart café-concert Les Ambassadeurs booked Bruant in 1892, Lautrec's poster gave him a monument: black hat, black cape, red scarf, and a stare of total contempt for the audience about to pay him. The Ambassadeurs' manager hated it; Bruant refused to go on unless it stayed on the walls.
Through the 1890s Lautrec lived for stretches inside the licensed brothels of the rue des Moulins and the rue d'Amboise — a resident, not a tourist. The roughly fifty paintings and hundred drawings he made there, and the 1896 lithograph album Elles, show the women off duty: waiting, washing, playing cards, asleep. The pictures neither glamorize nor moralize, which is why they still look modern; the medical inspection queue in the Musée d'Orsay's Rue des Moulins canvas is as plain as a timetable.
He worked constantly between the drinking. The count of what he left behind, made after his death: 737 paintings, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, and 5,084 drawings — in a working life of under twenty years.[1]
The drink was constant — he carried a hollowed cane that held a half-litre of spirits — and syphilis, contracted in the houses he painted, advanced through the 1890s. In February 1899 his family had him committed to a sanatorium at Neuilly for three months; to prove his sanity he drew the circus from memory, thirty-nine crayon drawings, and argued his way out with them.[5]
The reprieve lasted two years. After a stroke he was taken to his mother's estate, the Château Malromé in the Gironde, where he died on 9 September 1901, aged thirty-six. His mother and his dealer Maurice Joyant built the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi around the contents of his studio; it remains the largest collection of his work anywhere.[2]
Lautrec built his posters around particular people, and several of them owe their surviving fame to him.
Jane Avril, a dancer at the Moulin Rouge who had spent part of her adolescence in the Salpêtrière hospital, was the one he drew most and liked best. He gave her a poster of her own in 1893 and another in 1899, and she said afterwards that she owed her celebrity to him.[3]
Yvette Guilbert, the diseuse who performed in a plain dress and long black gloves, disliked his drawings of her. He reduced her to the gloves, a thin neck and an enormous mouth, and she wrote asking him not to make her quite so hideous. He kept doing it, and the gloves are now the thing everyone knows about her.
May Milton, May Belfort, Loïe Fuller and La Goulue all got the same treatment: a silhouette, a colour, one gesture, reduced until it could be read from across a street.
In 1896 Lautrec published Elles, a portfolio of eleven colour lithographs about the women of the licensed brothels where he had been living on and off for years.[4]
There is nothing in it a customer would want. The women wash, do their hair, sit on the edge of the bed pulling on a stocking, lace a corset, sleep, take breakfast on a tray. Nobody performs, nobody looks at the viewer, and the only man in the set is barely there.
It sold badly and was not understood. It is now generally read as the most sustained attempt by any nineteenth-century artist to show that world as work and as ordinary life, rather than as either scandal or fantasy.
In February 1899 Lautrec's drinking produced a collapse, and his mother had him committed to a private asylum at Neuilly. The press reported that he had lost his mind, and he was told he would be kept there indefinitely.[2]
He got out by drawing. Denied models and largely denied materials, he worked from memory. The result was a series of about thirty-nine coloured drawings of the circus — the ring, the horses, the clowns, the trainer with a whip — precise enough to demonstrate that his memory and his hand were intact.
He was released in May, after less than three months, into the care of a distant relative who was supposed to keep him sober. The circus drawings were made as evidence and they are among the best things he ever did.
Born on 24 November in Albi, to parents who are first cousins.
Breaks his right femur at thirteen; the left follows a year later. Neither heals properly and his legs stop growing.
Moves to Paris at seventeen to study under Léon Bonnat, then spends five years in Fernand Cormon's studio, beside Vincent van Gogh and Émile Bernard.
Meets Suzanne Valadon, model and self-taught artist; they become lovers.
The Moulin Rouge opens and hangs his circus painting in the foyer; he gets a standing table.
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, his first poster, is pasted three thousand times across Paris in the last days of the year.
The Ambassadeurs poster of Aristide Bruant — hat, cape, red scarf. The manager hates it; Bruant refuses to perform unless it stays up.
Makes the first of his posters for the dancer Jane Avril, who says afterwards that she owes her celebrity to him.
Draws Yvette Guilbert reduced to her long black gloves, a thin neck and an enormous mouth. She writes asking him not to make her so hideous.
Publishes Elles, the lithograph album of the licensed houses' women off duty — waiting, washing, asleep.
Publishes Elles, eleven colour lithographs of the women of the licensed brothels going about ordinary life. It sells badly.
Committed to a Neuilly sanatorium for three months; draws the circus from memory, thirty-nine drawings, to argue his way out.
Is committed to a private asylum at Neuilly in February after a collapse brought on by drinking.
Draws about thirty-nine coloured circus scenes from memory to prove his mind is intact, and is released in May.
Dies on 9 September at his mother's Château Malromé in the Gironde, aged thirty-six, of complications of alcoholism and syphilis after a stroke.
The Musée Toulouse-Lautrec opens in Albi, built by his mother and his dealer Maurice Joyant from the contents of his studio.
Painting · Post-Impressionism in Montmartre
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted the customers and performers of the Moulin Rouge as a group portrait of people he knew by name, including himself. It is at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Painting · Post-Impressionism in Montmartre
A bareback rider in a gauze skirt sits sideways on a gray horse that is gathering speed, while the ringmaster, Monsieur Loyal, urges it on with his whip. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted it in 1887–88, and it is set at the Cirque Fernando in Montmartre. Joseph Oller bought it for the Moulin Rouge, where it hung near the entrance. It is now at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1925.523.
Poster · Belle Époque Paris
The singer Aristide Bruant looks back over his shoulder in a wide black hat, a dark cape and a red scarf, with a wooden stick in his gloved hand. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made the poster in 1892 for Bruant's shows at the Ambassadeurs, a café-concert on the Champs-Élysées. The director disliked it, and Bruant refused to go on stage unless it was used. The Art Institute of Chicago's copy is 1948.450.
Poster · Belle Époque Paris
The dancer Jane Avril kicks one leg high in an orange dress on a tilted stage. In front of her, the neck of a double bass and a musician's hairy hand rise out of the orchestra pit. Jane Avril ordered the poster herself in 1893 to advertise her show at the Jardin de Paris, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec designed it. The Art Institute of Chicago's copy is 1949.1004.
Poster · Belle Époque Paris
The dancer La Goulue kicks up her white petticoats in the middle of a packed dance floor, and her partner Valentin le Désossé stands in front of her in gray. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made the poster in 1891 for the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. It was his first poster, and it made him famous. The Art Institute of Chicago's copy is 1954.1193.
Painted a portrait of · 1887
Pastel on cardboard, 1887: Van Gogh in profile at a café table with a glass in front of him. The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam holds it.
Met · 1886
Fellow students in Fernand Cormon's Paris studio in 1886. Toulouse-Lautrec drew Van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile at a café table; the portrait is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Partner of · 1885–1888
Valadon modelled for him from 1885 and the two were lovers; the relationship ended around her 1888 suicide attempt. He was among the first to take her own drawings seriously.
Painted a portrait of · 1892
The 1892 Ambassadeurs poster - black hat, black cape, red scarf - and three more Bruant posters after it made the singer's silhouette one of the most recognized images in Paris. Lautrec drank and drew at Bruant's cabaret Le Mirliton.
Studied under · 1882
Lautrec entered Bonnat's atelier in 1882, his first formal Paris training; when Bonnat closed the studio months later, the students — Lautrec among them — moved on to Fernand Cormon's.
Art & design movement · circa 1890–1914
One of the three graphic artists the Metropolitan Museum of Art names as most influential for Art Nouveau poster design, with Alphonse Mucha and Jules Cheret.
Maurice Joyant remembered Toulouse-Lautrec entering Salis's noisy Chat Noir before the artist became famous.
Visit the place
Toulouse-Lautrec was among the students at Cormon's open studio when Van Gogh joined in 1886. He made a pastel portrait of Van Gogh in 1887, now in the Van Gogh Museum.
Visit the placeA genetic bone disorder — modern medicine's best guess is pycnodysostosis — traceable to his parents being first cousins. He broke his right femur at thirteen and his left at fourteen; neither healed properly, his legs stopped growing, and he reached about five feet, an adult torso on a child's legs. The condition pushed him from an aristocrat's outdoor life toward drawing, which became everything.
The 1891 poster Moulin Rouge: La Goulue — the cancan dancer Louise Weber mid-kick in a white blouse, the crowd behind her one flat black silhouette. Three thousand copies were pasted across Paris and it made both the Moulin Rouge and the artistic poster famous. Among paintings, At the Moulin Rouge (Art Institute of Chicago) and the Rue des Moulins brothel pictures are the most reproduced.
For stretches of the 1890s, yes — in the licensed houses of the rue des Moulins and rue d'Amboise, as a lodger the women treated as furniture. The point was access to the unposed: roughly fifty paintings and a hundred drawings of the residents waiting, washing, playing cards and sleeping, plus the 1896 lithograph album Elles. The pictures record; they do not advertise and they do not scold.
Of the combined effects of alcoholism and syphilis, at thirty-six. Years of constant drinking — his hollowed walking cane carried spirits — led to a family-ordered sanatorium stay in 1899, which he exited by drawing thirty-nine circus scenes from memory to prove his mind sound. A stroke followed in 1901, and he died at his mother's Château Malromé on 9 September 1901.
The Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, his birthplace, holds the largest collection — built from his studio's contents by his mother and his dealer after his death. In Paris, the Musée d'Orsay hangs the major brothel and dance-hall paintings. The posters are in print-room collections everywhere; the Metropolitan Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France both hold fine impressions of La Goulue and the Bruant posters.
Yes — they were fellow students in Fernand Cormon's Paris studio from 1886, and Toulouse-Lautrec drew Vincent van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile over a café glass; the portrait is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In 1890 Lautrec challenged a critic to a duel for disparaging Van Gogh's work — it went no further than the challenge.
Real people he knew. Jane Avril, a Moulin Rouge dancer who had spent part of her adolescence in the Salpêtrière, was the one he drew most. Yvette Guilbert, the singer he reduced to long black gloves and an enormous mouth, disliked the drawings and wrote asking him not to make her so hideous. May Milton, May Belfort, Loïe Fuller and La Goulue got the same treatment.
A portfolio of eleven colour lithographs Lautrec published in 1896 about the women of the licensed brothels where he had been living on and off. They wash, do their hair, lace a corset, sleep and take breakfast. Nobody performs and nobody looks at the viewer. It sold badly and is now read as the most sustained attempt by any nineteenth-century artist to show that world as ordinary work.
His drinking produced a collapse in February 1899 and his mother had him committed to a private asylum at Neuilly. The press reported that he had lost his mind and he was told the stay would be indefinite.
By drawing. Denied models and largely denied materials, he worked from memory, producing about thirty-nine coloured circus scenes — the ring, the horses, the clowns, the trainer. They were precise enough to show that his memory and his hand were intact. He was released in May, after less than three months.
The informal name for pycnodysostosis, a rare inherited bone disease described by the French physicians Maroteaux and Lamy in 1962 and nicknamed for its most famous presumed case; the gene involved was identified in 1996. For Toulouse-Lautrec himself the diagnosis is retrospective. What the record shows directly is that his parents were first cousins, that he broke each femur in adolescence, and that his legs stopped growing while his torso did not.
Frequented
Maurice Joyant remembered Toulouse-Lautrec entering Salis's noisy Chat Noir before the artist became famous.
Painted a portrait of · 1887
Pastel on cardboard, 1887: Van Gogh in profile at a café table with a glass in front of him. The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam holds it.
Partner of · 1885–1888
Valadon modelled for him from 1885 and the two were lovers; the relationship ended around her 1888 suicide attempt. He was among the first to take her own drawings seriously.
Painted a portrait of · 1892
The 1892 Ambassadeurs poster - black hat, black cape, red scarf - and three more Bruant posters after it made the singer's silhouette one of the most recognized images in Paris. Lautrec drank and drew at Bruant's cabaret Le Mirliton.
Studied at
Toulouse-Lautrec was among the students at Cormon's open studio when Van Gogh joined in 1886. He made a pastel portrait of Van Gogh in 1887, now in the Van Gogh Museum.
Associated with · 1895
One of the three graphic artists the Metropolitan Museum of Art names as most influential for Art Nouveau poster design, with Alphonse Mucha and Jules Cheret.
Met · 1886
Fellow students in Fernand Cormon's Paris studio in 1886. Toulouse-Lautrec drew Van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile at a café table; the portrait is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Studied under · 1882
Lautrec entered Bonnat's atelier in 1882, his first formal Paris training; when Bonnat closed the studio months later, the students — Lautrec among them — moved on to Fernand Cormon's.
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