Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, << too LOOZ loh TREHK, ahn REE duh >> (1864-1901), was a French artist. His favorite subjects were the nightclubs, singers, and dancers of Montmartre, the night life district of Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec immortalized many such entertainers, including Jane Avril, May Belfort, Chocolat, La Goulue, and Yvette Guilbert.
Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced in his style by the French painter Edgar Degas and by Japanese prints. This influence can be seen in the dynamic slant of space, the flat areas of color with no shadows or modeling, and the unusual way he cropped his scenes. These characteristics appear in At the Moulin Rouge (1892), which is reproduced with this article. The painting portrays a crowd at a popular Montmartre dance hall.
Toulouse-Lautrec was a superb draftsman. He was also one of the early masters of the lithographic poster, helping to raise the poster from the level of commercial art to the status of fine art. Aristide Bruant in His Cabaret (1893) features bold, flat, outlined forms. But the delicacy of line and hint of shadow in Bruant’s profile make it stand out by its animation of expression.
Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi to an aristocratic family on Nov. 24, 1864. In 1878 and 1879, he broke both legs in separate accidents. These injuries compounded a hereditary bone disease, and his legs never grew to their full length. In 1885, he began to exhibit and publish his work. Toulouse-Lautrec participated in several avant-garde (experimental) exhibitions, including the Salon des Independents in Paris and Les XX in Brussels, Belgium. He died of alcoholism and syphilis on Sept. 9, 1901, at the age of 36.
