Henri ToulouseLautrec 1864-1901
His career lasted just over a decade and coincided with two major developments in late nineteenth-century Paris: the birth of modern printmaking and the explosion of nightlife culture.
Lautrec’s posters promoted Montmartre entertainers as celebrities, and elevated the popular medium of the advertising lithograph to the realm of high art. His paintings of dancehall performers and prostitutes are personal and humanistic, revealing the sadness and humor hidden beneath it all.
Some say that without Lautrec, there would be no Andy Warhol or Lichtenstein. He is the Godfather of Pop Art.
Lautrec began drawing at a young age, when frequent illnesses kept him bedridden at the family estate in southern France. His favorite juvenile subject was the horse, as seen in the sketch of “Two Riders on Horseback.�
Lautrec’s fascination for horses endured throughout his career, as seen in his 1899 work At the Circus: The Spanish Walk, one of a group of colored chalk drawings Lautrec made from memory while recovering at a sanatorium and offered to doctors as proof of his improving health.
Lautrec compensated for his physical deformities with alcohol and a self-deprecating wit. So his sympathy and fascination for the marginal in society may be partly explained by his own physical handicap.
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art under two academic painters, LÊon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon, who also taught Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh.
Left: In the studio with Bonnat
Below: In Cormon’s studio with other apprentices
Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer.
One of his favorite models was a prostitute nicknamed La Casque d’Or (which means Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker. The transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—because her pale complexion and artificial hair color clash with the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec’s fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects.
Later in his career, he would devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel.
Lautrec eventually established himself as the premier poster artist of Paris and was often commissioned to advertise famous performers in his prints. One of Lautrec’s favorite cafÊ-concert stars was Yvette Guilbert. She had bright red hair, thin lips, a tall gaunt physique, and wore black elbow-length gloves.
Though her head is cropped by the top edge of the composition, her elongated body and trademark gloves in the upper left corner of the poster Divan Japonais leave no doubt that it is her being depicted on the poster.
The style and content of Lautrec’s posters were heavily influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Areas of flat color bound by strong outlines, silhouettes, cropped compositions, and oblique angles are all typical of woodblock prints by artists like Katsushika Hokusai and
Likewise, Lautrec’s promotion of individual performers is very similar to the depictions of famous actors, actresses, and courtesans from the so-called “floating world” of Edo-period Japan. For instance, Lautrec’s poster of May Belfort can be compared with the figure in Three Kabuki Actors by Utagawa Kuniyasu.
The artist frequently employed the spattered ink technique known as crachis, seen in his series of prints depicting Miss Loïe Fuller. Fuller was an American famous in Paris for her performances combining dance, multicolored artificial lights and music. She was known as the “Electric Fairy.”
Lautrec executed about sixty versions of this print in a variety of colored inks, including gold and silver, which evoke the effect of her performances.
Lautrec’s poignant depiction of a prostitute in the painting Woman before a Mirror offers a counterpoint to Miss Loïe Fuller. The woman stands straight-backed as she gazes into a looking glass, dispassionately analyzing her body’s attributes and faults. And meanwhile, the viewer is compelled to do the same, as we are presented with both her body and her blurred reflection.
Sources: http://www.toulouse-lautrec-foundation.org/ http://www.toulouse-lautrec-foundation.org/biography.html Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: A Thematic Essay - Cora Michael “The Posters of Toulouse-Lautrec” by Edouard Julien