Henri Toulouse-Lautrec - my stories about the artists of the past:)

Introduction

 Toulouse-Lautrec always was one of my favorite artists. I remember bringing cups with his reproductions from my trip to Paris, with the most famous and popular paintings - "The Black Cat"

So, let's have a small journey through his biography and creations:)

Bio

 Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was born in year 1864 in France, in an old aristocratic family.

Self portrait

At the age of 13, Henri, rising from his chair, fell and received a fracture of the neck of the left hip. In 15 months there was a fracture of the neck of the right thigh. After that, the crippled legs stopped growing and remained 70 cm long throughout life. So he turned into a cripple with partially atrophied legs and was forced to move in a wheelchair.

His parents were very different people.  The father did not pay any attention to the family,especially on the son-cripple while the mother gave herself completely to it. Such a difference in approaches affected the young artist's mind deeply, and very soon he switched from academical studies to visiting "bad companies" on Montmartre. 

Lautrec's disease can be attributed to the group of polyepyphilis dysplasia. According to others, the reason for the small growth of Henri was osteopetrosis (painful thickening of the bone), proceeding in a soft form (sourse).

As a grown up artist he had three main passions: women, alcohol and painting. He could drink that lot how no one could, and was even proud of it. His passion to visiting brothels finally ended badly - he contracted syphilis. This everything in combination to his hereditary bone disease led to the fact that he was paralyzed.

Creations

You may pay attention on the fact that realy rarely you can see legs depicted on his paintings. Looks like the artist subconsciously avoided depicting the part of body he refused to think about.

"Medical checkup"

Some of his artworks looks almost childish, but still filled with talent and specific vision:

"Portrait of Oscar Wilde"

"Make-up lady"

Still his main passion remained women, and he did numerous sketches and fulfilled artworks, depicting them over and over again. By the way despite of his appearence he was quite popular among them:)

See you in the next review:)

Thank you for watching:)

Love, Inber