Toulouse Lautrec Biography

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa Treclau

It is in the shade of the cathedral of Albi, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa was born on November 24th, 1864, son of the Count Alphonse de Toulouse Lautrec and his German cousin, Adèle Tapié de Céleyran. Only son after the death of his brother, one year of age in 1868. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa came down from a direct line of famous counts de Toulouse who dominated the Albigensian area of year 750 until 1271.

Of a weak constitution, undoubtedly due to a series of marriages between blood relations, the young person Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa, raised at the High school Fontanes (current Condorcet high school), is victim twice in 1878 and 1879, of two consecutive fractures of the left and right femurs ,which will leave him disabled through his entire life.

Decsending from a very favoured family, a circle where one cultivates idleness and hunting, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec will suffer at a very young age his handicap. His disability which was badly lived by his mother with whom he will always maintain the privileged subsidiary relations. It is not the case of his father, the Count Alphonse, an impassioned original of hunting and hawking with which spaced reports of mutual incomprehension were established as of early childhood.

Endowed at a very young age, with a strong great hit of pencil, the puny teenager draws without slackening horses, dogs and falcons he came across during summers in the family property of Bosc. Provided succeffully with his baccalaureat in Toulouse in November 1881; Toulouse-Lautrec, definitely gifted for arts, attended the atelier of one of his father's friend, the animalist painter René Princeteau.

After attending René Princeteau Atelier, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa attented in Paris, one of the largest painting shcool: Léon Bonnat. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec met there: Louis Anquetin, Henri Rachou and Eugène Boch but the Master hardly appreciated him and declared to his young pupil: “Your painting is not bad, it is knack, but finally, that is not bad; but your drawing is simply atrocious”.

With the closing of the Bonnat workshop, appointed professor at the School of the fine arts, the pupils found themselves in the great painter hands: Fernand Cormon, where joined Émile Bernard, François Gauzi and Vincent van Gogh. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec continued academic studies 1882-1888 and started to expose himself under the name of “Monfa”, “Tolav-Segroeg” or “Treclau”.

Very quickly, Toulouse Lautrec chose the camp of modernity and turned into burlesque the crowned Wood of large Puvis de Chavannes; in a painting where it represented contemporary characters facing their backs. It is not long after Toulouse Lautrec settled street Fountain, not far from the workshop of Degas whom he admired and which will say of him: “He wears my clothes, but recut to his measurement “.

The discovery of Montmartre transformed Henri de Toulouse Lautrec; by 1886, he devoted all his talent painting this so particular microcosm, high places such as the Moulin-Rouge, le Moulin de la Galette or le Mirliton, a mixture of aristocracy and crookedness. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa became one of the main actors and the lucid witness, pencils and brushes within the hands.

Plunged in the Montmartre atmospshere, the painter of Albi is not long in attending the stars of the café concert, the cabaret and the variety. High colored characters which he immortalized with his paintings, his caricatures and his posters. In this shady world located between the Place Blanche, Pigalle and the Buttes de Montmartre, Toulouse Lautrec evolved like a fish in water that only alcohol will retain him in its fishnets.

” Every evening I will work to the bar “he wrote , crunching with an obvious originality Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril, Loïe Fuller, the Greedy one or boned Valentine. Toulouse Lautrec devoted a revolutionary poster by its graphics to the dancer of the Moulin-Rouge and a whole album to the famous” the monologuist “, Yvette Guilbert, who became his friend.

In parallel to all these activities, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec became a large illustrator of newspaper while revealing his caricatures in the Eunuch flute, the French Mail, Le Figaro illustrated, the Skirmish or the Rire, not saving anybody and not even himself: when representing accompanied by an opulent cow for a simple Invitation with a cup of milk.

The night world of the Montmartrean painter, in the glare of footlights of the popular balls (Bal du Moulin de la Gallette, 1889), of the circus (To the Circus Fernando: Rider, 1887-1888) of the theatre (the Grand Lodge, 1897) but also that, more hidden, of the prostitution which prevails then in Paris (With the Living room of the street of the Mills, around 1894). Thus Toulouse-Lautrec, himself a notorious boarder of the closed houses, immortalized his paintings without concession, his drawings and his lithographies like a splendid continuation.

They, the prostitutes of any origines of which Toulouse Lautrec feeling near to them by his infirmity. It thus delivers to us a vision of this world of pleasure and restores us with genius the human being which survives humiliation.

But the life relentlessly catches up him up in the middle: at the same time creative and destroying swirl. Combined syphilis and alcoholism put his faculties hard to the test; an artist who believed himself inexhaustible. By 1897, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec production slowed down; victim of crises of hallucinations and paranoia, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was interned in the private clinic of Doctor Sémelaigne in Neuilly, in spring 1899, on demand from his family.

Deprived by of freedom and drinks, he endeavoured to prove to the world his mental good health by carrying out a series of splendid drawings on the topic of the circus. At his exit, to put trust on his work, he affirmed: ” I bought my freedom with my drawings “. After a last series of paintingss devoted to the theatre carried out in Bordeaux, where he remained starting from October 1900 accompanied by the admiral Viaud, charged to prevent him from drinking,

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec went back to Paris in April 1901 to sort his works in his workshop on the street Frochot. His pallet darkened like his mood; exhausted, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa regained the South-west of France on July 15th, 1901 and passed away in the family castle of Malromé on September 9th of the same year.

Revealed in his lifetime primarily as a poster artist and an illustrator, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa will not be long knowing the fame in painting, a few years after his death, thanks to the tireless activity of his friend and merchant, Maurice Joyant. By 1902, this last one organized a first retrospective of the painter in Durand-Ruel and later succeeded in convincing the general council of the Tarn to open a Toulouse-Lautrec museum in the superb palace of Berbie, an episcopal residence of the bishops of Albi.

Inaugurated in 1922 by Léon Bérard, Minister for State education and the Art schools, this one shelters one of the nicest collection in the world from this artist. Works put to the forefront of modernity in full 19th century.

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa grave, Verdelais, Gironde, France

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It is in the shade of the cathedral of Albi, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa was born on November 24th, 1864, son of the count Alphonse de Toulouse Lautrec and his German cousin, Adèle Tapié de ...

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Please follow on below... two oil paintings looking for an expert.

Even if this blog as the name of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa, the oil paintings below are not authenticated.

These two paintings were bought from a Parisian Antiques shop.

The paintings are oils on wood dating of late 1800's early 1900's

Unfortunately not authenticated. They are not from a descriptive catalogue.

These two oils paintings are looking for an expert !