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Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life
Debauched aristocrat, cabaret painter, accidental dwarf? Julia Frey's definitive, superbly researched biography strips away the myth of Toulouse-Lautrec to reveal the tortured man beneath. This is a remarkable and compelling portrait, featuring 135 photos and illustrations.
600 pages, Paperback
First published June 16, 1994
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October 9, 2020According to the kitchen scales, the paperback edition of this book comes in at 940 grams, despite which it is a light, engaging and mildly troubling account of the brief life of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (mostly H.T-L below .
All the bits of the biography are good, but coming together the whole seemed to me less than the sum of the parts, leaving me dissatisfied and restless. Part of it is that Julia Frey with curious skill spends quite a bit of space avoiding drawing conclusions. Not having a thesis, which she doesn't, is already a literary sin in my heart for non-fiction, going out of one's way to pointedly not draw conclusions just seems perverse, still, despite myself, I enjoyed parts even when circa a hundred and twenty or so pages in to the book she left his childhood and moved on to his art training in Paris, I felt that those first 18 odd years could have been dealt with in thirty pages, the, in my opinion, superfluous ninety pages were still readable and as pleasant as reading about a child quizzing his cousins about the model carriages that they would get made for their games could be.
At times Frey's method disconcerted me. She pointed out that his chosen topics of brothels, bars, prostitutes and punters were on trend in 1880s and 1890s Paris which left me wondering did Toulouse-Lautrec paint such things because he had an intrinsic interest in them as artistic themes, or because he was market orientated, and if left to his own devices would he have been happiest painting baskets of kittens?
Two basic questions we might ask are why was he a dwarf? And why did he die relatively young at 37 years of age? Frey avoids dealing with either, it might have been syphilis, or it might have been inbreeding, it might have been the alcohol or it might have been syphilis. Somehow she avoids discussing in medical detail why one might think syphilis played or role in terms of symptoms displayed, or if inbreeding and alcohol are sufficient to explain birth and death. If of course the evidence isn't sufficient, then that itself is something that could have been explored, syphilis was widespread - Flaubert apparently said that everybody has it more or less, but was still shameful enough for the family to have hushed it up, a few of H.T-L's cousins also were similarly short or shorter and short-lived, they were also the products of cousin marriage - though that doesn't rule out syphilis. It seems curious that we know so little medically speaking about somebody who died in 1901 and was in regular contact with medical professionals throughout his life. Ok, we can shrug, why be so narrow minded, it can be a little from column A and little from column B, we can regard an open text as a gift, non-prescriptive, no need for anyone to grind their teeth over it.
Anyway, what about the positives you ask. Well it is a story out of fiction. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a scion of an extremely blue-blooded family, his father once regretful explained to an archbishop that the days when a Toulouse-Lautrec could sodomise a monk and then hang him from the nearest convenient tree were long past, the family were the descendants of the medieval count of Toulouse who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, through an active policy of cousin marriage they kept broad acres of land holdings and castles within the family, their vineyards however were hit by phylloxera and the men of the family were increasingly eccentric which is a polite way of saying barking mad when one describes the rich and noble. Their typical obsession was hunting, H.T-L's father Alphonse would wander about with a train of hunting dogs, birds of prey and cormorants (for fishing) retreating with a bunch on them to live Gormandghast style in a tower of his brother's townhouse in Albi in seclusion for some years, the grandfather died in a hunting accident (he rode off the edge of a cliff), naturally the family were strict royalists, the womenfolk tended to be conspicuously Catholic while their husbands were sourly anti-clerical. One of H.T-L's uncles first interested him in art and art was felt to be a broadly acceptable pass-time so long as one was within the Salon system.
Of course you could say that my objections miss the point, one might argue that Julia Frey has achieved the perfect combination of style and subject. The book is impressionistic, maybe even pointalist, dabs of precise colour which from the correct view point form a harmonious whole. Bah humbug.
Every new biography must have its justification, if not a thesis then some new discovery, in this case the inspiration was provided by a cache of Toulouse-Lautrec family letters, but as Frey points out, the letters are not a straight-forward source of information about his life, they can be elusive and skirt round issues, some seek to blur facts and even mislead the reader, the family letter was a way of recreating and remodelling events, not a pure exchange of news. Moreover by his late teens, possibly connected with the effective disinheritance of Henry,most of these letters are to and from his mother and need to be understood in the context of the performance of that relationship Frey tells us.
The author, Julia Frey, felt this was the perfect project for herself because she also had a background in print making and lithography. She is good on H. T-L's prints and lithographs, he devises new techniques and as an artist was ahead of his time in releasing albums of limited edition prints, so far ahead of his time, in fact that there was no market for the prints, and in his lifetime he may not have covered his own costs - once he was dead of course and another decade had passed it was a different story. His paintings sold if slowly at first for hundreds of Francs, towards the end of his life for thousands, he got around 2/3rds of the sale price the rest went to the gallery. H. T-L had a great stroke of luck when Vincent van Gogh died, as Theo van Gogh within six months retired, returned to Holland and died - his place at a Paris Gallery was taken by a friend of H. T-L's who eagerly promoted his work, as we say, it's an ill wind...
However man cannot live from art alone, particularly if like H.T-L, the artist doesn't keep accounts and turnover is slow, he had an annual allowance in region of 43,000 francs from the family, in 1898 15,000 francs from one estate (p.393) however he spent money with the insouciance of the born aristocrat and was frequently asking his mother for more to pay the rent and once had to borrow 3 francs 50 to pay for a hotel bed for the night because the hotel called the police when he wouldn't pay his bill - no one was much impressed by his claim to be the Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec.
At one point Frey compares Auguste Renoir's Un Bal au Moulin de la Galette with H.T-L's 1889 picture of the same title. And she discusses a couple of the individual works in similar detail - I would have happily had more of that kind of analysis to read as I felt this brought us closer to the artist than suggesting how his relationship with his mother fed into a Madonna or whore dynamic in H.T-L's mind, Frey's psychologising was interesting enough but her tendency was to hint, and at that to hint darkly in a sharp whisper across the page, it was all very dramatic but inconclusive and perhaps that is fair and good - there can be no book of right answers after all, we are all in the process of becoming after all until we die.
I wondered if the satirist is a conservative, if then beneath the decadent bon vivour can we see the strict moralist? Because the reproductions of his pictures of bars and brothels didn't seem to me to suggest pleasure nor even pity or sympathy for those depicted, rather inevitable decay.
H.T-L painted on several of these pictures J'ai vu ca quoting Goya in his Disasters of War pictures (p.360) suggesting an equivalence between war and the decadent, boozy demi-monde of fin de siecle Paris, which I found striking if over the top - but that is where H. T-L's mind was at that time.
If you have a taste for those last days of the century in Paris then there is plenty more to enjoy in this book - discussion of the Moulin Rouge and other bars where the principal attraction was that the owner would be rude to you in-between declaiming his own poetry and serving up over priced glasses of indifferent beer. The weird world of the Salon and how H. T-L first received favourable critical appreciation when he exhibited in Brussels.
This is one of those books which I found both deeply unsatisfactory, but also quite fun, despite or because it's subject was a disaster in slow motion with compelling imagery.
All the bits of the biography are good, but coming together the whole seemed to me less than the sum of the parts, leaving me dissatisfied and restless. Part of it is that Julia Frey with curious skill spends quite a bit of space avoiding drawing conclusions. Not having a thesis, which she doesn't, is already a literary sin in my heart for non-fiction, going out of one's way to pointedly not draw conclusions just seems perverse, still, despite myself, I enjoyed parts even when circa a hundred and twenty or so pages in to the book she left his childhood and moved on to his art training in Paris, I felt that those first 18 odd years could have been dealt with in thirty pages, the, in my opinion, superfluous ninety pages were still readable and as pleasant as reading about a child quizzing his cousins about the model carriages that they would get made for their games could be.
At times Frey's method disconcerted me. She pointed out that his chosen topics of brothels, bars, prostitutes and punters were on trend in 1880s and 1890s Paris which left me wondering did Toulouse-Lautrec paint such things because he had an intrinsic interest in them as artistic themes, or because he was market orientated, and if left to his own devices would he have been happiest painting baskets of kittens?
Two basic questions we might ask are why was he a dwarf? And why did he die relatively young at 37 years of age? Frey avoids dealing with either, it might have been syphilis, or it might have been inbreeding, it might have been the alcohol or it might have been syphilis. Somehow she avoids discussing in medical detail why one might think syphilis played or role in terms of symptoms displayed, or if inbreeding and alcohol are sufficient to explain birth and death. If of course the evidence isn't sufficient, then that itself is something that could have been explored, syphilis was widespread - Flaubert apparently said that everybody has it more or less, but was still shameful enough for the family to have hushed it up, a few of H.T-L's cousins also were similarly short or shorter and short-lived, they were also the products of cousin marriage - though that doesn't rule out syphilis. It seems curious that we know so little medically speaking about somebody who died in 1901 and was in regular contact with medical professionals throughout his life. Ok, we can shrug, why be so narrow minded, it can be a little from column A and little from column B, we can regard an open text as a gift, non-prescriptive, no need for anyone to grind their teeth over it.
Anyway, what about the positives you ask. Well it is a story out of fiction. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a scion of an extremely blue-blooded family, his father once regretful explained to an archbishop that the days when a Toulouse-Lautrec could sodomise a monk and then hang him from the nearest convenient tree were long past, the family were the descendants of the medieval count of Toulouse who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, through an active policy of cousin marriage they kept broad acres of land holdings and castles within the family, their vineyards however were hit by phylloxera and the men of the family were increasingly eccentric which is a polite way of saying barking mad when one describes the rich and noble. Their typical obsession was hunting, H.T-L's father Alphonse would wander about with a train of hunting dogs, birds of prey and cormorants (for fishing) retreating with a bunch on them to live Gormandghast style in a tower of his brother's townhouse in Albi in seclusion for some years, the grandfather died in a hunting accident (he rode off the edge of a cliff), naturally the family were strict royalists, the womenfolk tended to be conspicuously Catholic while their husbands were sourly anti-clerical. One of H.T-L's uncles first interested him in art and art was felt to be a broadly acceptable pass-time so long as one was within the Salon system.
Of course you could say that my objections miss the point, one might argue that Julia Frey has achieved the perfect combination of style and subject. The book is impressionistic, maybe even pointalist, dabs of precise colour which from the correct view point form a harmonious whole. Bah humbug.
Every new biography must have its justification, if not a thesis then some new discovery, in this case the inspiration was provided by a cache of Toulouse-Lautrec family letters, but as Frey points out, the letters are not a straight-forward source of information about his life, they can be elusive and skirt round issues, some seek to blur facts and even mislead the reader, the family letter was a way of recreating and remodelling events, not a pure exchange of news. Moreover by his late teens, possibly connected with the effective disinheritance of Henry,most of these letters are to and from his mother and need to be understood in the context of the performance of that relationship Frey tells us.
The author, Julia Frey, felt this was the perfect project for herself because she also had a background in print making and lithography. She is good on H. T-L's prints and lithographs, he devises new techniques and as an artist was ahead of his time in releasing albums of limited edition prints, so far ahead of his time, in fact that there was no market for the prints, and in his lifetime he may not have covered his own costs - once he was dead of course and another decade had passed it was a different story. His paintings sold if slowly at first for hundreds of Francs, towards the end of his life for thousands, he got around 2/3rds of the sale price the rest went to the gallery. H. T-L had a great stroke of luck when Vincent van Gogh died, as Theo van Gogh within six months retired, returned to Holland and died - his place at a Paris Gallery was taken by a friend of H. T-L's who eagerly promoted his work, as we say, it's an ill wind...
However man cannot live from art alone, particularly if like H.T-L, the artist doesn't keep accounts and turnover is slow, he had an annual allowance in region of 43,000 francs from the family, in 1898 15,000 francs from one estate (p.393) however he spent money with the insouciance of the born aristocrat and was frequently asking his mother for more to pay the rent and once had to borrow 3 francs 50 to pay for a hotel bed for the night because the hotel called the police when he wouldn't pay his bill - no one was much impressed by his claim to be the Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec.
At one point Frey compares Auguste Renoir's Un Bal au Moulin de la Galette with H.T-L's 1889 picture of the same title. And she discusses a couple of the individual works in similar detail - I would have happily had more of that kind of analysis to read as I felt this brought us closer to the artist than suggesting how his relationship with his mother fed into a Madonna or whore dynamic in H.T-L's mind, Frey's psychologising was interesting enough but her tendency was to hint, and at that to hint darkly in a sharp whisper across the page, it was all very dramatic but inconclusive and perhaps that is fair and good - there can be no book of right answers after all, we are all in the process of becoming after all until we die.
I wondered if the satirist is a conservative, if then beneath the decadent bon vivour can we see the strict moralist? Because the reproductions of his pictures of bars and brothels didn't seem to me to suggest pleasure nor even pity or sympathy for those depicted, rather inevitable decay.
H.T-L painted on several of these pictures J'ai vu ca quoting Goya in his Disasters of War pictures (p.360) suggesting an equivalence between war and the decadent, boozy demi-monde of fin de siecle Paris, which I found striking if over the top - but that is where H. T-L's mind was at that time.
If you have a taste for those last days of the century in Paris then there is plenty more to enjoy in this book - discussion of the Moulin Rouge and other bars where the principal attraction was that the owner would be rude to you in-between declaiming his own poetry and serving up over priced glasses of indifferent beer. The weird world of the Salon and how H. T-L first received favourable critical appreciation when he exhibited in Brussels.
This is one of those books which I found both deeply unsatisfactory, but also quite fun, despite or because it's subject was a disaster in slow motion with compelling imagery.
June 13, 2018
I was surprised at how many misconceptions I had about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec before I read this biography. Taken predominately from thousands of letters only recently made available, Julia Frey has given us an extensive biography that reveals an incredibly complicated, brilliant personality whose art may never have been so poignant except for his disabilities. I had always thought that Henri’s problems with his legs began after two falls in his boyhood. But no, his parents knew their child was in trouble way before he ever started to walk; the falls were a symptom of his condition, not the cause of it. I also thought his father was a stern, distant disciplinarian, only to discover quite the opposite. Alphonse, nicknamed Alph, was a bit of a profligate; he was absent when he was needed most, showing up unexpectedly and insisting that everyone take his advice. He was often neglectful—usually out hunting or traveling—sometimes affectionate, sometimes endearing, but never helpful. Henri’s mother learned to make decisions on her own and took upon herself the long-suffering role of “keeper”, an overprotective nurse who may have contributed greatly to Henri’s subsequent dependence on her. What a way to grow up! Apparently he was a joyful child despite his literal growing pains, and throughout his life his upbeat attitude carried him through situations that would oppress an average person, not to mention an ugly, misshapen one. Nonetheless, as one would expect from a person who is the center of attention, he learned how to manipulate others: “He had learned as a child how to impose his will by psychological means, and his friends, both male and female, found him irresistibly charming but unrelentingly tyrannical. He had become extremely good at getting others to do his bidding—and managed to do so in large part without resorting to demands on their pity for his physical state.” Henri learned to deflect scorn and discomfort by making fun of himself, both in public and private, and by making it so easy to be around him, he managed to attract many loyal friends throughout his lifetime.
But there is no getting away from the fact this his family considered him unsuitable to the title of Count, especially when he decided to devote himself entirely to art—not just acceptable art, but low-life, common art both in medium and subject matter. The more they objected, the more he indulged himself. And, as if to emphasize, or explain, his own relationship with the world, his art became known for its realism—in a harsh way—exposing false beauty and getting to the heart of the subject. An article from editor Arthur Huc tells us: “Henry’s originality as an artist came largely from his use of ugliness and exaggeration of physical quirks to reveal the psychological truths of his models, to bring forth, albeit with cruelty, the irony of the antagonism between interior and exterior beauty.” This, in a nutshell, describes Henri’s approach to art, which he also emphasizes in a letter to his friend: “I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally. It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like to adorn them with stray hairs, to make them bigger than life and shiny.”
It turns out that the author has had years of training as an artist and printmaker, which makes her a perfect interpreter of his art. She has interspersed both black-and-white sketches in the text, where appropriate, and several pages of full-color works that she explains in detail. It’s so very helpful! It was like Julia was taking me by the hand and pointing out details that I had missed for many years (mostly the peripheral stuff, always significant as it turns out). She knows who the models are and what Henri’s relationship with them were; many of the models were somewhat unidentifiable in the backgrounds of some of the paintings, but there they are. She explains how Henri would paint an oil as a preparatory sketch for a lithograph, then display them side-by-side to demonstrate the creative process. This, and a lot of his other artistic applications are woven into the text, giving us a thorough picture of his work as well as his personality and, inevitably, his decline into alcoholism. I would consider this a definitive biography. Highly recommended.
But there is no getting away from the fact this his family considered him unsuitable to the title of Count, especially when he decided to devote himself entirely to art—not just acceptable art, but low-life, common art both in medium and subject matter. The more they objected, the more he indulged himself. And, as if to emphasize, or explain, his own relationship with the world, his art became known for its realism—in a harsh way—exposing false beauty and getting to the heart of the subject. An article from editor Arthur Huc tells us: “Henry’s originality as an artist came largely from his use of ugliness and exaggeration of physical quirks to reveal the psychological truths of his models, to bring forth, albeit with cruelty, the irony of the antagonism between interior and exterior beauty.” This, in a nutshell, describes Henri’s approach to art, which he also emphasizes in a letter to his friend: “I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally. It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like to adorn them with stray hairs, to make them bigger than life and shiny.”
It turns out that the author has had years of training as an artist and printmaker, which makes her a perfect interpreter of his art. She has interspersed both black-and-white sketches in the text, where appropriate, and several pages of full-color works that she explains in detail. It’s so very helpful! It was like Julia was taking me by the hand and pointing out details that I had missed for many years (mostly the peripheral stuff, always significant as it turns out). She knows who the models are and what Henri’s relationship with them were; many of the models were somewhat unidentifiable in the backgrounds of some of the paintings, but there they are. She explains how Henri would paint an oil as a preparatory sketch for a lithograph, then display them side-by-side to demonstrate the creative process. This, and a lot of his other artistic applications are woven into the text, giving us a thorough picture of his work as well as his personality and, inevitably, his decline into alcoholism. I would consider this a definitive biography. Highly recommended.
May 11, 2014
I read this (quickly, following my wife's yellow highlights) to prepare for a course we are taking this summer as part of The Oxford Experience. It is well written and comprehensive. The parts I read carefully brought the facts, and more important, the emotion of Lautrec's life - his struggles, his successes, his relationships - into sharp focus. Perhaps, after the course, I will go back and savor more from Frey's biography.
July 5, 2012
When fate dictated I read two unrelated biographies simultaneously I admit I thought the plan was stupid. Recent reads of Christopher Moore's “Sacre Bleu” and Andrew Graham-Dixon's “Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane” left me curious about both Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and the Baroque period in Italy, respectively, and fate was not to be deterred, especially by a feeble mind. So onward I pushed with my reading of Julia Frey's “Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life” and Franco Mormando's “Bernini: His Life and His Rome” expecting confusion reminiscent of that old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial: “You got your Toulouse-Lautrec on my Bernini....No - you got your Bernini on my Toulouse-Lautrec.”
Some people are born into this world, others are born alongside it. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was definitely one of those individuals born into this world, embracing it, molding it to his desires, squeezing every last drop from it. Recognized immediately as a prodigy, the world seemed to be there for Bernini's picking. And pick he did, combining his artistic talents with his amazing abilities to dissimulate to gain the favor of pope after pope and king and queen alike and amass an unrivaled fortune. Bernini would use that fortune to cushion him from many attacks by jealous rivals and to allow him and his family to escape actions which should have destroyed their noble standing.
Conversely, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, owing to a hereditary bone growth disorder, was born alongside the world, feeling forced to look at the world from a few feet away, anxious to be a part, angry to be apart, quick to point out the world's flaws even – or, rather, especially – amid its beauty. Escaping unscathed was never a possibility for Toulouse-Lautrec. Sentenced from the outset to a life as a derided spectator he thought solace and acceptance were to be found in drink, and that decision brought his life to an early end.
As for the art of the two talented men, again the extreme differences prove somehow complimentary. Much of Bernini's work is at first glance beautiful but seems to bend toward the grotesque with continued examination. It feels as if Bernini takes the sacred and underpins it with touches of the profane which ultimately bleed through to dominate and spoil the work; as evidence consider Bernini's portrayal of St. Theresa. On the other hand, most of Toulouse-Lautrec's work initially feels grotesque but often becomes more beautiful with continued examination; I'm thinking now of his work “Au Salon de la Rue des Moulins (reprise). He takes the profane and adds in gentle touches of the sacred which ultimately come through to augment the work. Admittedly, Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings very often feel like jabs at conventional ideals of beauty, but I really can't blame the man for wanting to jab a world that excluded him from every aspect of its beauty.
Even the subtitles of the two works are revelatory of the difference between the lives of the two men. Mormando's Bernini is subtitled “His Life and His Rome,” indicating the control and mastery Bernini had over his life and his time. Frey subtitles her work on Toulouse-Lautrec impersonally and generically “A Life.”
Regarding each biography as a reading experience I would give the edge to Frey. The many color plates showing many works of Toulouse-Lautrec along with her comments on these works strengthened my feelings for Toulouse-Lautrec the artist, and her sympathetic and thorough text strengthened my feelings for Toulouse-Lautrec the human being. The only complaint I would have is often the references to the paintings are not presented in the same order as the plates themselves. As for the Mormando book, I don't think the chosen plates do justice to the talents of the artist; most plates are just the busts of certain figures from Bernini's time, and these busts feel like little more than concrete evidence of Bernini's dissimulating nature. The author often mentions many of Bernini's architectural masterpieces but no plates showing these masterpieces are present in the book.
Who knew? What initially felt like an ill-advised foray into two unrelated lives at the same time actually ended up as an enjoyable study in contrasts. Like the characters in that old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial, I was pleasantly surprised by the results of the serendipitous blending of such different tastes. I guess it goes to show you - sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't.
Some people are born into this world, others are born alongside it. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was definitely one of those individuals born into this world, embracing it, molding it to his desires, squeezing every last drop from it. Recognized immediately as a prodigy, the world seemed to be there for Bernini's picking. And pick he did, combining his artistic talents with his amazing abilities to dissimulate to gain the favor of pope after pope and king and queen alike and amass an unrivaled fortune. Bernini would use that fortune to cushion him from many attacks by jealous rivals and to allow him and his family to escape actions which should have destroyed their noble standing.
Conversely, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, owing to a hereditary bone growth disorder, was born alongside the world, feeling forced to look at the world from a few feet away, anxious to be a part, angry to be apart, quick to point out the world's flaws even – or, rather, especially – amid its beauty. Escaping unscathed was never a possibility for Toulouse-Lautrec. Sentenced from the outset to a life as a derided spectator he thought solace and acceptance were to be found in drink, and that decision brought his life to an early end.
As for the art of the two talented men, again the extreme differences prove somehow complimentary. Much of Bernini's work is at first glance beautiful but seems to bend toward the grotesque with continued examination. It feels as if Bernini takes the sacred and underpins it with touches of the profane which ultimately bleed through to dominate and spoil the work; as evidence consider Bernini's portrayal of St. Theresa. On the other hand, most of Toulouse-Lautrec's work initially feels grotesque but often becomes more beautiful with continued examination; I'm thinking now of his work “Au Salon de la Rue des Moulins (reprise). He takes the profane and adds in gentle touches of the sacred which ultimately come through to augment the work. Admittedly, Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings very often feel like jabs at conventional ideals of beauty, but I really can't blame the man for wanting to jab a world that excluded him from every aspect of its beauty.
Even the subtitles of the two works are revelatory of the difference between the lives of the two men. Mormando's Bernini is subtitled “His Life and His Rome,” indicating the control and mastery Bernini had over his life and his time. Frey subtitles her work on Toulouse-Lautrec impersonally and generically “A Life.”
Regarding each biography as a reading experience I would give the edge to Frey. The many color plates showing many works of Toulouse-Lautrec along with her comments on these works strengthened my feelings for Toulouse-Lautrec the artist, and her sympathetic and thorough text strengthened my feelings for Toulouse-Lautrec the human being. The only complaint I would have is often the references to the paintings are not presented in the same order as the plates themselves. As for the Mormando book, I don't think the chosen plates do justice to the talents of the artist; most plates are just the busts of certain figures from Bernini's time, and these busts feel like little more than concrete evidence of Bernini's dissimulating nature. The author often mentions many of Bernini's architectural masterpieces but no plates showing these masterpieces are present in the book.
Who knew? What initially felt like an ill-advised foray into two unrelated lives at the same time actually ended up as an enjoyable study in contrasts. Like the characters in that old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial, I was pleasantly surprised by the results of the serendipitous blending of such different tastes. I guess it goes to show you - sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't.
September 11, 2014
I wanted to learn more about Lautrec's life-- and to check the actual history against the visually remarkable but suspiciously romantic biopic "Moulin Rouge" (John Huston, 1952).
This bio met both of those goals for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the detailed presentation of "Henry's" personality, his eccentric family life, the colorful milieu that he inhabited. As a letter-writer, he was a charmer! The illustrations of his work are plentiful and well chosen, the photos of his life, perhaps less so. (Do you really need to see photos of Toulouse-Lautrec with his trousers down, defecating on a beach? No, neither did I.)
But that is a mere cavil. A larger difficulty with this reading is one that other Goodreadsers have noted: the author is mighty free with conjectures about what henry and others "must have" been thinking. By the time I was halfway through, I was regularly muttering, "But there are any number of OTHER things that they might have been thinking!" I felt even less interest in the incessant interpretation of the subconscious motivations she perceives in every work of art--
Sometimes an elephant's trunk is just an elephant's trunk!
This bio met both of those goals for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the detailed presentation of "Henry's" personality, his eccentric family life, the colorful milieu that he inhabited. As a letter-writer, he was a charmer! The illustrations of his work are plentiful and well chosen, the photos of his life, perhaps less so. (Do you really need to see photos of Toulouse-Lautrec with his trousers down, defecating on a beach? No, neither did I.)
But that is a mere cavil. A larger difficulty with this reading is one that other Goodreadsers have noted: the author is mighty free with conjectures about what henry and others "must have" been thinking. By the time I was halfway through, I was regularly muttering, "But there are any number of OTHER things that they might have been thinking!" I felt even less interest in the incessant interpretation of the subconscious motivations she perceives in every work of art--
Sometimes an elephant's trunk is just an elephant's trunk!
February 25, 2018
Other than a basic familiarity with some of his iconic posters, I knew very little about Henri Toulouse-Lautrec until I saw the 1952 movie, Moulin Rouge, starring Jose Ferrer. The movie, as I recall, indicates that the cause of his stunted height was a childhood injury to his legs. In fact, Henry (as author Julia Frey refers to Toulouse-Lautrec throughout the book) had dwarfism, as did a few of his cousins. Apparently it was a custom in his family for cousins to marry each other -- Henry's parents were first cousins -- and as a result, a recessive dwarfism gene manifested itself several times in Henry's generation.
This book is, put simply, just about everything I wanted it to be. As a good biography should, it vividly describes the time and the place where the subject lived, in this case late 19th Century France. The book is interesting, at first, from a medical perspective, as we see the various ailments that Henry suffered from and how the doctors of the time attempted to treat him. (I seem to have a particular fascination with old-fashioned medicine.)
And then, as Henry matures, the story becomes more and more about his art: the style, the inspiration, the controversy, and the technique. The book is well-illustrated, as any book about an artist should be. We have black-and-white pictures integrated into the text and a section of glossy color plates in the middle of the book. When one of the plates is mentioned in the text, the plate number is indicated in parenthesis, which is very helpful. You know when to look for the color illustration and when not to bother. Another nice touch is that at the top of each even-numbered page, in brackets, is the current year in the narrative. Many times when I'm reading non-fiction I wonder what year it is that I'm reading about, and I often have to double back through quite a few pages to find out. With this book it's very simple. This is a great idea, and I wish it would catch on. (And evidently it hasn't; the book was published in 1994. Oh well.)
I rarely give a five-star rating here on Goodreads, but I found it so absorbing that it definitely qualified. Henri Toulous-Lautrec led a short but very interesting life, and produced some amazing artwork (I actually like his paintings more than I do his prints) and Julia Frey did a fantastic job of telling his story.
This book is, put simply, just about everything I wanted it to be. As a good biography should, it vividly describes the time and the place where the subject lived, in this case late 19th Century France. The book is interesting, at first, from a medical perspective, as we see the various ailments that Henry suffered from and how the doctors of the time attempted to treat him. (I seem to have a particular fascination with old-fashioned medicine.)
And then, as Henry matures, the story becomes more and more about his art: the style, the inspiration, the controversy, and the technique. The book is well-illustrated, as any book about an artist should be. We have black-and-white pictures integrated into the text and a section of glossy color plates in the middle of the book. When one of the plates is mentioned in the text, the plate number is indicated in parenthesis, which is very helpful. You know when to look for the color illustration and when not to bother. Another nice touch is that at the top of each even-numbered page, in brackets, is the current year in the narrative. Many times when I'm reading non-fiction I wonder what year it is that I'm reading about, and I often have to double back through quite a few pages to find out. With this book it's very simple. This is a great idea, and I wish it would catch on. (And evidently it hasn't; the book was published in 1994. Oh well.)
I rarely give a five-star rating here on Goodreads, but I found it so absorbing that it definitely qualified. Henri Toulous-Lautrec led a short but very interesting life, and produced some amazing artwork (I actually like his paintings more than I do his prints) and Julia Frey did a fantastic job of telling his story.
September 13, 2010
Long and detailed, but thoroughly interesting account of the artist. The author spent a decent amount of time on artistic analysis of individual works in the artist oeuvre. I would recommend to any biography/Lautrec fan.
Want to read
December 15, 2008i was rummaging through my shelves last night and saw this...i bought it a very long time ago and for some reason didn't read it...
easily remedied...
easily remedied...
February 20, 2013
So much work went into this very long chronology, but shorter, thematic chapters would have brought life to "... a Life."
August 15, 2021
Very readable, with lots of facts that I did not know before. This book gave very thorough and compelling insights into Toulouse-Lautrec's life and times.
September 6, 2021
Sad life, brilliant artist.
July 16, 2009
A great artist and a tortured human being - this biography of Toulouse-Lautrec is fascinating both for the story of his life and the picture the reader gets of turn of the century France. My only caveat is that the author occasionally does too much conjecturing and supposing, coming up with analyses that may or may not be true.
December 30, 2015
I found this to be such an amazing insight into the strange yet amazing world of Toulouse Lautrec- I've always loved his posters and lithographs ever since I studied him at GCSE level. I now feel as if I have a much better grounding of the artist as a person, as well as understand much more about his condition and why he was often at the Moulin Rouge thanks to this book.
September 2, 2008
Lively and amazingly well researched biography of the deformed genius who was both a French aristocrat and a painter of genius whose subjects were the cabaret dancers, circus performers, pimps and prostitutes of late nineteenth century Paris.
December 31, 2012
This book is a hefty- but riveting- bio of Toulouse-Lautrec. From start to finish, I couldn't put it down. Photos throughout the book, as well as a color section of artwork, makes this book A+. Even if you aren't a fan of his work, I think you'll find this a wonderful read.
April 4, 2009
"The" book on Toulouse-Lautrec in my opinion (and many others.) Hefty, detailed and spot-on. It probably doesn't hurt that it plays up to my passion with Paris at the end of the 19th century.
August 1, 2011
1995 PEN Center USA Award Winner for Nonfiction
February 26, 2013
Ma dau cu capul de pereti! Da, dau tot ce am mai bun pentru arta si e posibil ca niciodata sa nu fie recunoascatoare fata de ce fac pentru ea. /// Clownesa Cha-U-Kao
February 7, 2014
An all-encompassing biography of a great Parisian artist. Must read if you are a scholar or just curious about his life.
July 18, 2007
Very interesting book about the artist and his life.
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May 1, 2017Hardcover
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