Henri de Toulouse Lautrec biography in Biographies from the artzine on artrepublic.com

The extraordinary characters in his paintings from clowns to aristocrats, from sportsmen to prostitutes cover a broad social spectrum. His works were always striking with bold forms and colours. His influences probably came from Goya in Lautrec's etchings and Degas in his painting. A friendship with Gauguin certainly led Lautrec in a particular direction in his lithographs, inspired by Japanese colour prints. Despite his colourful life, his vast oeuvre covers a precise time and place with extraordinary detail, evoking the atmosphere of this time perfectly.

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was born in 1864 at Albi, son of Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec. As a result of falls while a boy that broke both his legs he was left a dwarf, with a normal torso on two stunted legs. 

Lautrec began his schooling at the Lycee Fontanes in Paris and his interest in art can already be seen as he frequented the studio of Rene Princeteau. In 1882 he became a pupil of Bonnat and a year later of Cormon.

Lautrec began his schooling at the Lycee Fontanes in Paris and his interest in art can already be seen as he frequented the studio of Rene Princeteau. In 1882 he became a pupil of Bonnat and a year later of Cormon.

In 1889 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Independents and two years later produced his first poster for the Moulin Rouge. By 1894 Lautrec had taken up residence in the brothel in the Rue des Moulins and was fully immersed in the drinking and debauchery of this seamier side of Parisian life. Works such as 'Les Deux Amies' (c.1894) and 'La Goulue Dancing' (1895) for example are just two of the many paintings he produced that documented these 'fin-de-siecle' scenes.

In 1899, due to excessive living, Lautrec was taken to an asylum at Neuilly with an attack of delirium tremens. Upon his release he couldn’t help but return to his hard-drinking ways and two years later he died from a paraltyic attack.

"[He] painted no landscapes, no religious pictures, no abstract conceptions. All his subjects, except for a few representations of animals, were real people whose lives were an integral part of his own life. "Gerstle Mack, from Toulouse-Lautrec (1938).