Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French artist who observed and documented with great psychological insight the personalities and facets of Parisian nightlife and the French world of entertainment in the 1890s. He was born into an aristocratic family, but suffered from a congenital condition that stunted his growth and made his bones fragile. He broke both his legs in his adolescence and remained very short as an adult. He turned to art as a refuge from his physical and emotional pain, and studied under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon in Paris. He was influenced by Edgar Degas and the Impressionists, but developed his own style of expressive brushwork, flat areas of color, and distorted forms. He became a regular at the Moulin Rouge and other cabarets, where he befriended many performers and prostitutes. He also depicted the bohemian life of Montmartre, the elegant society of the Champs-Élysées, and the horse races at Longchamp. He was a prolific artist who produced over 700 paintings, 350 prints and posters, and 5,000 drawings in his short career. He was also an innovator in lithography, creating posters that captured the essence of his subjects with a few bold strokes and vibrant colors. He was one of the first modern artists to embrace advertising as a form of artistic expression. He died at the age of 36 from complications of alcoholism and syphilis, which he contracted from his frequent visits to brothels. He was buried in his family's estate at Malromé, but his heart was interred at the cemetery of Verdelais, where he had often visited a relative who was a priest. His work is widely admired for its honesty, humor, and humanity, and has influenced many artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney.