Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, A Short and Painful Life

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the most famous and prolific post-impressionistic painters, yet his life was chiseled with a disfiguring deformity and what proved to be a deadly addiction.   His life started out with all the promises that good fortune and wealth could offer in so far as his family of origin.

Henri Marie Raymond Toulouse Lautrec Montfa was born on November 24, 1864  in Albi, France. Albi is a city in the southern part of France about 85 kilometers north from Toulouse set in a forested and mountainous part of France.

His father Count Alphonse and his mother Countess Adèle, were first cousins, both of whom were from wealthy aristocratic families from the counts of Toulouse, that had for over a thousand years often married within their ranks.   His parents separated when he was about four years old after the death of his younger brother.

Early childhood was privileged, with his childhood divided between the three châteaux of his family. Henri was a beautiful child, who was doted on as an only child and was noted to have a gift for drawing at an early age; encouraged more by his uncle than father.

At the age of seven, he moved with his mother to Paris and started formal art lessons. Several years later, due to his fragile health he and his mother moved back to Albi, with hopes their thermal baths and other treatments could help his growth, which had stymied in comparison to other children his age.

Initially his destiny, which seemed to be blessed and fortunate became shadowed in early adolescence, as despite the best treatments available, his growth remained stunted. Historians have said that there were other distant relatives who likewise were of abnormal stature or dwarf-like.

When he was 13, he broke the femur of his left leg, from a fall off a horse, and the following year broke the femur of his right while walking with his mother.  Though both fractures healed, his legs never grew, leaving him with an adult size torso supported on small child size legs.

Medical historians felt he probably suffered from pycnodysostosis, caused by a recessive gene that both of his parents carried. The disease, now referred to as Toulouse Lautrec syndrome, is characterized by a lack of normally developed legs, and facial disfigurements.

He never was able to be more than 5 feet tall and had to walk with a cane.  When he was 17 years old, he returned to Paris for his baccalaureate, which he failed, sending him back to Toulouse to complete it.

By the time he was 20, he returned to Paris and had moved into a studio at 19 Rue Fountain in the 9th arrondissement, seen in the photo.  Next to him was the atelier of Degas, whose art he admired. At that time he also met and befriended Vincent Van Gogh, who remained in touch with him, up until his suicide.

To get a perspective of his age, in the impressionistic movement, the majority of the Impressionists were in their 20’s and 30’s when he was born.  Therefore his art is described as being late or post-impressionistic.

He starting making his living by designing and painting posters for the various gala dance halls and cabarets that had sprouted up around Montmartre and Pigalle.    He began frequenting the Moulin de la Galette, which had already been immortalised in Renoir’s painting, Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette, 1876 .

Pigalle is still a very colorful and lively part of northern Paris, at the foot of the steep winding streets that lead up to Sacre Coeur and the Butte Montmartre.  It was considered the epicenter of bohemian Paris and remains today notorious for prostitutes, shady B night clubs, sex shops, brothels and all of the sort.

Henri’s talent was quickly recognized and besides his poster commissions, he branched out to doing sketching of the dancers and scenes of everyday life in the quarter.  The short bearded young man who limped with his cane and black top hat became a neighborhood fixture.

When he was 24 years old, he met Suzanne Valadon, who was a model but also painted on the side.  She was a single mother of a son who later took the name of his presumed father and became the famous impressionist Maurice Utrillo.

For Henri, it was a coup de foudre, or love at first sight.  Suzanne, the daughter of a washwoman was pretty, but was a noted flirt, manipulative and a heartbreaker.

Of little moral character, she slept around with some of the artists that she modeled for, including Renoir, and Degas.  During her relationship with Henri, she tried to pretend that her infant son was from her union with aristocratic Henri, but the child had already been born before they ever met.

Their relationship lasted until 1888, when he found out that she had been mocking him behind his back, and faked a suicidal gesture to get him to marry her.   Heartbroken, he tried to submerge himself in all the frivolity that Pigalle offered and started drinking more heavily than ever.

A year later, the Moulin Rouge opened with much fanfare and Henri became a regular well-paying patron.  Sitting at his own reserved table,  he relentlessly sketched while drinking amongst the camaraderie, whose joyousness and gaiety, he only pretended to mirror.

I have often noted pain can push people sometimes to even greater creativity, and in the case of Henri, this seemed to be his underlining thorn.  Apart from the pain and grief over his recent breakup, Henri would often remark, that if he had been born with longer legs, he probably would have never sketched and painted.

The star dancer of the Moulin Rouge was Louise Weber, nicknamed La Goulue or glutton.  Though she was a great dancer, she was, coarse, vulgar, and sexually provocative, who would often down patron’s beverages.

It was she who brought the can can to furious fame, along with the Moulin Rouge.  The dexterity of her legs was enormous, who could remove men’s hats with her toes.

Henri of course would find her character fascinating and painted her in many of his works.  His other favorite model was Jane Avril, who replaced La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge. Intelligent, discrete, and refined, she was a complete opposite from La Goulue, but became an overnight sensation in her interpretation of the can can.

He found solace and comfort in the bosom of those society found on the fringes; be it prostitutes, circus performers, and the sort.  Despite his aristocratic origins, he always felt more accepted by them.

In 1894, he took up living in a brothel, joking that he had finally found women near his size.  The prostitutes adopted him affectionately and many served as models for his paintings.

One of his favorites was Rosa la Rouge, a red haired prostitute whose physical attributes are seen in many of his works.  She is infamously noted to have given him syphilis.

Henri remarked during that period, that ” I have never felt more at home”. Whether this was based in all sincerity or not, it certainly was used to shock and displease his mother Countess  Adèle who had established herself in a nearby appartement.

His mother was his sole source of love and emotional nourishment growing up and was said to have been overly protective of him.  Certainly, there was a dependency on her emotionally, and at times financial despite his artistic success.

She became very involved in his career and hosted exhibitions of his works in London. Her higher vision of her son was more grounded in his tremendous artistic ability, than the reality of the less than ideal behavior and lifestyle Henri had slipped into.

His choice of alcoholic beverage was now absinth, affectionately known as the “green faerie”.  He created a cocktail known as the “earthquake, which was half cognac and absinthe.

His debauchery, drinking, wild parties, flippant and cynical attitudes became more prominent as his dependence on alcohol took over his life. His entourage of friends started to notice him becoming more bizarre in his dress and often seemed paranoid.

In 1899, he experienced severe delirium tremens, which necessitated his admittance to a mental asylum in Neuilly.  After several months, he was released with the strict advice that he shouldn’t return to his beloved Montmartre,

Under the protective tutelage of an old family friend, he went to live in Bordeaux, which was near his mother’s wine making château Malroné.   His sobriety didn’t last long, and he started drinking within 10 months, hiding alcohol inside his cane.

By 1900, he was noted to suffer deeper bouts of depression, anxiety, and paranoid obsessions.  To those surrounding him, he looked like he had lost the will to live, and showing much less interest in his art.

In March of 1901, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that paralyzed his legs.   He returned to Paris briefly to finish and sign some of his works, and then upon his return to Bordeaux, had another stroke in August that left one side of body paralyzed.

After his second stroke, his mother brings him back to château Malroné.  Despite receiving the best of medical care at that time, Henri died on September the 9 th, at the mere age of 36 from alcoholism and possibly tertiary syphilis.

His last words in seeing his father’s late arrival to his death bed were: “le vieux con”. Con is an extremely pejorative expletive meaning bastard or asshole.

Henri Toulouse Lautrec’s adult life was a stark clash of contrasts from his aristocratic origins to his bohemian lifestyle of wild debauchery, from which he drew inspiration for his art. I suspect that his total embrace of living in a culture much below his own status, was an angry and hostile slap in reaction to his father’s emotional abandonment of him and his art.

He was well aware of the physical difference he presented in comparison of other young men by his adolescence.  “I am neither tall nor handsome,” he said then, and that became an inner matrix that he never overcame, despite his growing fame.

His deeply disturbed self-esteem wasn’t just from the image he found in the mirror, but perhaps more so from the emotional alienation, he had grown up with his father. Count Alphonse was always more interested in chasing ladies and hunting than being a father to his only son.

The literal refuge he found in those considered to be on the fringes of society, allowed him to feel less freakish about himself.  He could feel completely accepted amongst them, knowing that they too suffered rejection from the very society that acclaimed his art, but couldn’t overlook his appearance.

Their affection and doting on him protected him from the reality that he would not have been able to compete for females from his own social class. Likewise, his fascination with painting lesbians offered him the softness of female sensuality and love that he was very sadly deprived of in his life.

Despite his serious addiction, he was an extremely prolific artist. He painted 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters and over 5,000 drawings in his very short and painful life.

The majority of his works are in the Musee Toulouse Lautrec in Albi, housed in his natal château, which is still owned by descendants of his family.   He has a whole room devoted to him at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

The room is dimly lit to protect the integrity of his colors and despite the frivolity of his characters beautifully captured, there is a certain melancholy feeling in the air.  I think Henri Toulouse Lautrec would recognise  this deep sadness as the very one he desperately tried to run away from in his pursuits of drinking and painting.