Archive for December, 2010

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec pastel works

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
Born in Albi, France, in an aristocratic family that dated back a thousand years. He started to draw and paint as a kid, by the time he was 10.
Young Toulouse-Lautrec had two accidents braking his legs, one by the other, which have never healed properly and thus stopped growing. That’s why as adult he was only 1.5 meters tall. Deprived of the kind of life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived wholly for his art and is famous for his paintings of the night-life of late 19th-century Paris (including cabaret dancers, prostitutes, racetracks and circus performers) and show posters.
Henri would also sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, and at the same time he would make swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into bright-colored paintings. Becoming part of the Montmartre life and in order to protect himself against the crowd’s ridicule of his appearance, Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink heavily. The invention of the cocktail “Earthquake” or Tremblement de Terre is attributed to Toulouse-Lautrec; a potent mixture containing half absinthe and half cognac.
Among the others such as Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh and Herni Rousseau he was well known as Post-Impressionist. He died  in family château of Malrom at age of 37.
Upon his death, the majority of his paintings were offered to The Louvre Museum, and the Louvre rejected them. Later his paintings and posters, particularly the ‘Moulin Rouge’ group, have been in great demand and bring high prices at auctions and art sales.

Source: Compton’s Encyclopedia, Wikipedia