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Henri de Toulouse - Lautrec
(1864-1901)
 Henri
de Toulouse-Lautrec was born on November 24, 1864, in southern France.
Son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse, he was the last in
the line of an aristocratic family that dated back a thousand years.
Today, the family estate houses the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec. As a child,
Henri was weak and often sick. But by the time he was ten years old he
had begun to draw and paint.
At
age twelve Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at fourteen his right
leg. The bones did not heal properly, and his legs ceased to grow. He
reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally
short legs. He was only 4 1/2 feet (1.5 meters) tall.
Deprived
of the physical life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec
lived completely for his art. He dwelt in the Montmartre
section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and
bohemian life that he loved to depict in his work. Dance halls and
nightclubs, racetracks, prostitutes - all these were memorialized on
canvas or made into lithographs.
Toulouse-Lautrec
was very much an active part of this community. He would sit at a
crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, meanwhile making swift
sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches
into brightly colored paintings.
Toulouse-Lautrec
died on September 9, 1901, at the family chateau of Malrome.
(The
text taken from the Internet)
Interesting
links:
Lautrec
art 1
Lautrec
art 2
Lautrec
art 3
Project
prepared
by
Viljeka Šavli, artworks chosen by Metka Miljavec
Solkan Primary School
, Slovenia
April,
2003 |
