Being brought up in the sixties and seventies and having an
interest in art means that I think I’ve always been aware of Toulouse Lautrec.
His Athena posters of Parisian dancers were everywhere back then and if that wasn’t enough there was Monty Python and the ‘no timeToulouse ’ sketch.
His Athena posters of Parisian dancers were everywhere back then and if that wasn’t enough there was Monty Python and the ‘no time
Well, it's in perfectly common parlance. No-time Toulouse . The story of
the wild and lawless days of the post-Impressionists.
But I digress.
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or more simply Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, a French painter,printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator who
led a very colourful and theatrical life in Paris in the late 19th century. He made
exciting, elegant, provocative images of the decadence of Paris in those times, often on cardboard, brown paper, or
tablecloths.
He’s one of the legendary post impressionist painters
alongside Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – and what a dilettante bunch they were with their missing ears, syphilis, sultry teenage South Sea
island mistresses, and of course funny top hats.
Lautrec was vertically challenged, a short-arse, the result
of a combination of childhood ailments and rumoured in-breeding. But that
didn’t stop him painting big. I love his circus painting most of all. He
captures the movement and the light, the excitement, the mystery and the sex
perfectly. I can almost smell the horses in the ring and hear the crowd
applauding.
I learnt a lot from those paintings with their squiggles,
blots, scribbles and flourishes.
Unfortunately though, not enough; I can’t paint like him and
I never did run away to the circus.
