Toulouse Lautrec: paintings and a brief biography

The end of the year before last - the beginning of the last century were extremely fruitful for the genius artists, whose paintings today cost millions of dollars in various auctions. To them, the Frenchman Toulouse Lautrec, an artist by the grace of God, also rightly belongs. The parents of the future recognized talent came from an aristocratic family, and the boy himself was very sick in his childhood and, of course, was fond of drawing. He mostly depicted horses and dogs, and also liked to make caricatures of people around him.

The beginning of the way

Parents did not mind that the son was engaged in art. Toulouse Lautrec (paintings of that period are almost not preserved) already in 1884, opens his own workshop in the bohemian district of Montmartre - then housing there was quite cheap. Nearby were the workshops of other well-known painters and later sculptors. I must say that the appearance of the artist was very original. His height was below 150 centimeters (but then he was not considered a dwarf, as the average height of a man in France was lower by 10 centimeters than today), his head was disproportionately huge (apparently due to childhood illnesses), and his feet - a small Size.

Life and death

The talented young artist Toulouse Lautrec, whose paintings have already begun to gain popularity among art lovers, led a very scattered lifestyle. By the age of 30 he was a hopeless alcoholic and fell ill with syphilis, as a result of belonging to bohemia. The attacks of white fever became more frequent , after which Lautrec was sent by the mother to treatment (1899) in a psychiatric hospital near Paris. There he spent almost three months, and when he was discharged, almost immediately took up the old one with new forces, as if he wanted to reduce himself to the grave as soon as possible. In 1901, he returned to the capital, completed several unfinished works. On the Atlantic coast in the same year it is broken by a stroke, and the artist dies at the age of 36 years.

Toulouse Lautrec. Paintings

For his life in art, which lasted less than 20 years, the artist painted a huge number of works: more than 5,000 drawings, 363 posters and engravings, 275 watercolor sketches. Created oil paintings in the amount already 737 did not enjoy the special attention of the then critics. Among them are such as "In Moulin Rouge", "Laundress", "Gladilitschitsa", "Portrait of Van Gogh", "Cable Dancing". True recognition came only when Toulouse Lautrec died. His paintings are valued to this day, occupying the best positions at auctions and in collections - private and museum.