Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
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Toulouse-Lautrec
frequented the Moulin Rouge and other cabarets of the
Montmartre district of Paris, where his wit attracted
a large group of artists and
intellectuals, including Irish author Oscar Wilde,
Dutch painter Vincent
van Gogh,
and French performer Yvette Guilbert. He also frequented
the theater, the circus,
and Parisian brothels. Toulouse-Lautrec preserved
his impressions of these places
and their celebrities in portraits and sketches
of striking originality and power.
Outstanding examples are La Goulou Entering the
Moulin Rouge (1892, Musée
Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi), Jane Avril Entering
the Moulin Rouge (1892, Courtauld Gallery, London),
and Au salon de la rue des Moulins 1894, Musée
Toulouse-Lautrec). His alcoholic dissipation, however,
eventually brought on a
paralytic stroke, to which he succumbed at Malromé,
one of his family's estates.
Toulouse-Lautrec,
many of whose works are in the museum that bears
his name in Albi, was a prolific creator. His oeuvre
includes great numbers of
paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, and
posters, as well as illustrations
for various contemporary newspapers. He incorporated
into his own highly
individual method elements of the styles of various
contemporary artists,
especially French painters Edgar Degas and
Paul Gauguin. Japanese art, then
coming into vogue in Paris, influenced his use of
sharp delineation, asymmetric
composition, oblique angles, and flat areas of color.
His work inspired van
Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Georges Rouault.