Curved legs of cancan dancers in the Moulin Rouge, the absinthe drinking van Gogh, the red and black of cabaret singer Aristide Bruant - when you think of the art metropolis Paris, you instinctively have images of the painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in front of you. Perhaps the imagination of the Fin de Siècle is joined by the depictions of simple, working women like "The Washerwoman" next to the girls getting dressed, those dancing, drinking, lying in bed and the various female nudes. The Post-Impressionist masterfully but very independently illustrated the Parisian Belle Époque, especially the Bohemian in Montmartre.
The then emerging artists' and amusement park became the new centre of Toulouse-Lautrec's life, after he had completed an academic training as a painter and draughtsman in Paris. From then on, he roamed the area around Place Blanche and Place Pigalle, mainly looking for his motifs there. For a long time, he had a love affair with the model and the later painter Marie Valadon in the free atmosphere of the Montmartre Hill. She lived in the house where he took his studio. Drawings discovered by chance by the self-taught artist sent her beloved Henri to his idol Edgar Degas for examination. His positive reactions aroused jealousy in Suzanne's short-legged lover. But the relationship was ended by her attempted suicide. The reason for this act of desperation is probably that she wanted to marry him, but he thought the marriage was a long meal, starting with the dessert he wanted to stay with. During this time the unhappy, well-off bohemian was in contact with many other artists. Encouraged, perhaps by Degas, he found further motifs for his work at the horse race track and ballet, but also in the circus. He was successful with the public, and yet doubts about his chosen path kept coming back to him. Since Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from the oldest French nobility, he should have lived, ridden and hunted in castles. But he suffered from a hereditary disease which led to his dwarfism, which made the usual occupation of the nobles impossible for him. He had remained interested in the arts. This often made him ponder his fate, as evidenced by the following statement: "To think that I would never have painted if my legs were only a little longer."
The painter and avant-gardist of poster art threw himself more and more excessively into the nightlife of bars and brothels. In the process, he fell increasingly addicted to alcohol. The admission to a sanatorium by his mother for rehab ultimately did not help him any more. He had to be taken to his parents' castle, where he died in their presence at the age of 36. However, he had become an immortal artist who left a large number of unique works of art to our delight.
Curved legs of cancan dancers in the Moulin Rouge, the absinthe drinking van Gogh, the red and black of cabaret singer Aristide Bruant - when you think of the art metropolis Paris, you instinctively have images of the painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in front of you. Perhaps the imagination of the Fin de Siècle is joined by the depictions of simple, working women like "The Washerwoman" next to the girls getting dressed, those dancing, drinking, lying in bed and the various female nudes. The Post-Impressionist masterfully but very independently illustrated the Parisian Belle Époque, especially the Bohemian in Montmartre.
The then emerging artists' and amusement park became the new centre of Toulouse-Lautrec's life, after he had completed an academic training as a painter and draughtsman in Paris. From then on, he roamed the area around Place Blanche and Place Pigalle, mainly looking for his motifs there. For a long time, he had a love affair with the model and the later painter Marie Valadon in the free atmosphere of the Montmartre Hill. She lived in the house where he took his studio. Drawings discovered by chance by the self-taught artist sent her beloved Henri to his idol Edgar Degas for examination. His positive reactions aroused jealousy in Suzanne's short-legged lover. But the relationship was ended by her attempted suicide. The reason for this act of desperation is probably that she wanted to marry him, but he thought the marriage was a long meal, starting with the dessert he wanted to stay with. During this time the unhappy, well-off bohemian was in contact with many other artists. Encouraged, perhaps by Degas, he found further motifs for his work at the horse race track and ballet, but also in the circus. He was successful with the public, and yet doubts about his chosen path kept coming back to him. Since Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from the oldest French nobility, he should have lived, ridden and hunted in castles. But he suffered from a hereditary disease which led to his dwarfism, which made the usual occupation of the nobles impossible for him. He had remained interested in the arts. This often made him ponder his fate, as evidenced by the following statement: "To think that I would never have painted if my legs were only a little longer."
The painter and avant-gardist of poster art threw himself more and more excessively into the nightlife of bars and brothels. In the process, he fell increasingly addicted to alcohol. The admission to a sanatorium by his mother for rehab ultimately did not help him any more. He had to be taken to his parents' castle, where he died in their presence at the age of 36. However, he had become an immortal artist who left a large number of unique works of art to our delight.
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