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Toulouse-Lautrec
1864-1901

One of the Greatest Painters Of All Time

French Post-Impressionist, Art Nouveau Painter and Printmaker

Artistically and stylistically influenced the following painters; - Edgar Degas, Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Impressionism and Japanese woodblock prints

Education - studied under Leon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon

Cause of death - a combination of alcoholism and  advanced syphilis

Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the most impressive painters of the Post-Impressionist art movement.  He lived the life of a decadent bohemian in the Parisian district of Montmartre.
Lautrec painted with insightful passion. Creating perceptively compelling images with pure color and shocking originality. The artist loved cafe life, drinking and women and he painted what he loved. his style is instantly recognizable.  Lautrec declared "In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature. "

The Post-Impressionism movement directly followed Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. Nearly all Post-Impressionist artists began as Impressionists, but then rejected recording light and color changes. The Post- Impressionists showed a greater concern for individuality, pure color, organization and form. Vincent van Gogh once said "It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures."

 Famous Painters Associated with the Post-Impressionist Art Movement

Paul Cézanne (1839 - 1906) French,
Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903)  French
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 - 1897) French
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)  Dutch
Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) French

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotations

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it. --Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

These people annoy me. They want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. Look, it is so easy to finish things. I can easily paint you a Bastien-Lepage....Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then. - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

I paint the dance girls because they are the ingenuous soul of Paris. ~ Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec


Novelty is seldom the essential... make a subject better from its intrinsic nature. -- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Key Descriptive Words  and Phrases associated with the Post-Impressionism movement -   Roger Fry, 1910, France,  Ambroise Vollard, geometric forms, Paris, arbitrary colour, esoteric, Synthetist style,   landscapes, Parisian cafe Culture, 19th-century, Paris, soleil levant,  open composition, impasto, vibrant, effets de soir, natural light, en plein air, Académie des Beaux-Arts, boating, leisure activities, Landscapes, modernization, synthetic pigments, industrialization, Independent Collective, avant-garde, Primitivism, Symbolist, France, French painters, The Académie Suisse, controversial ideas about painting, physics of colour, broader strokes, fleeting impression of colour and light, bright, vibrant, flowers, figures, modern art

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