Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: The Poster Genius
France’s greatest poster artist, Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) was fascinated by the nightclubs and music halls of Paris. He could capture the essence of a performance with a few simple lines.
A genius for drawing lies at the heart of Toulouse-Lautrec’s skill as an artist. He drew a great deal as a teenager, and this pastime was encouraged by the relative immobility imposed on him by his weak legs, which did not grow properly due to a congenital defect.
Even at a young age, Lautrec drew with accuracy and energy, and his temperamental preference for rapid improvisation can also be seen in his early paintings. In Paris, his rigorous academic training under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon disciplined his work and strengthened his sense of form, but he lost nothing of his verve. Over the years, his instinctive humour led him to develop a style which lay right on the edge of caricature.
Lautrec’s favourite subjects were the people he saw in the nightclubs and cafes of Montmartre. In this preference for city subjects, he followed painters like Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, who in the 1870s had made scrupulous studies of Parisian life, of people’s poses and gestures, composing pictures that gave a…
