Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is one of the - quote - "impressionist painters" - unquote - who really wasn't an impressionist. After all, Henri was only 10 years old when the first Impressionist exhibition was held in 1874 and had just beginning his serious study of art when the last of the original Impressionist exhibitions was held in 1882. It is then a bit more accurate to lump Henri into the "post-impressionists". But during his lifetime most people thought of him more as a graphic artist and illustrator.

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa - who quite legitimately held the title "Count Henri" - was born on November 24, 1864 into a family of French nobility and eccentricity. But it was a fairly informal family as counts and countesses go. Henri himself never stood on ceremony and virtually everyone from barmaids to barons knew him as "Monsieur Henri". Henri knew English and would sometime spell his name "Henry" although "Henri" was the norm.

Henri's dad, Alphonse (known as "Alph"), was definitely a wierdo, though perhaps not any more than anyone else who doesn't really have to work for a living. Henri's mom, Adéle Tapiè de Céleyran, was far more normal, and she finally got a bellyful of Alph's preference for hunting, goofing off, and chasing the ladies, and she moved out. Fortunately, like most of French aristocracy the Toulouse-Lautrecs had a number of separate residences, so Adéle and Alph didn't have to see each other if they didn't want to.

Alph and Adéle were first cousins and their relatively close consanguinity is one of the reasons cited for young Henri's health problems. When Henri was thirteen he fell down and broke his leg which healed only with difficulty. He broke his other leg a year later, and the usual story is that his legs stopped growing after that. This produced a physique in Henri where he had short legs and a normal size torso, producing a appearance similar to that of a dwarf.

Henri's height is reported by various sources - none of which cite a reference - as anything from 4' 6" to 5' 1". A comparison of photos of Henry standing with men presumably of normal height shows he was between 83 % and 87 % of normal. The average height of European men at the time was 5'5 - 5'6" and since Henri's associates were often men of at least middle class we can probably take the higher end (even as late as 1981, British men averaged 5' 7"). That would put Henri at about 4' 8". There is also a photo of him standing next to one of his models. She stands about half a head higher than Henri. Henri is slouching a bit but she is barefoot (to say the least). At that time women averaged about 5' 2". With the model standing six heads high Henry would fall somewhere between 4' 8" and 4' 9". However, Henri, though, claimed he was not technically a dwarf. If Henry was telling the truth he would have had to make him at least 4' 10" by the standards of the French military. It seems, then, that Henri was cutting his height a bit fat.

Most references who broach the subject say Henri suffered from pycnodysostosis, which is (obviously) a bone disease producing brittle bones. Now oft called the "Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome" Henri's physical appearance is consistent with this diagnosis. His hands and lips were disproportinately large, and he had some speech problems which sometimes produced drooling, and he was sometimes difficult to understand. Some of his friends reported another part of his anatomy was disproportionately large. This, though, is probably merely due to contrast of his short legs with a normal sized ... well, never mind.

As we said his short legs are often attributed to his childhood accidents, but Henri may have been correct when he said he was not a dwarf in a genetic sense. His dwarf-like look may have been exaggerated by his apparel since men's fashion of the time was to wear long coats which would have made his legs look even shorter than they really were. If you see the famous picture of Henri au naturelle his torso does look a bit longer than his legs (as all artists know the pubis is equidistant from the soles to the top of the head), but not excessively so. When dressed in a shirt and trousers sans manteau, Henri's proportions look to be within the normal range.

While recovering from his childhood accidents, Henri began to draw and rapidly showed true talent. He was a particularly facile and accurate draftsman and had a knack for caricature and cartooning. Since it was clear Henri would never be able to lead the life of a typical French nobleman, Adéle arranged for Henri to study in the atelier of Léon Bonnat, an academic painter who later became professor at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Artes. Léon , for his part, never did like Henri's work and developed a personal dislike for his student, a dislike that extended long after Henri was dead. In fact, until Léon himself died in 1922, he would actively work against museums adding Henri's paintings to their collections. But Henri found Léon's crticism spurred him to work harder. When Léon closed his teaching atelier to take on the professorship, Henri transferred to the studio of Fernand Cormon. Fernand, Henri said, would warmly approve everything his students did, an approach to teaching that Henry liked less than the relentless criticism of Léon. When Léon said something was good, Henri knew knew he meant it.

Henri spent the rest of his life alternating between painting, printmaking,and illustrating while spending his leisure hours in cafe's and night clubs (including the famous Moulin Rouge). Henry also paid attention the the ladies in the various hot spots. And when we say hot spots, we mean hot spots and when we say he paid attention we mean he paid attention to them.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Henri realized considerable artistic success during his lifetime. But his fame was mostly as an illustrator and graphic artist. He became interested in the then high tech fields of printmaking and lithography and was soon commissioned to create illustrations for books, magazines, and posters. The posters became particularly popular and were recognized almost at once as being valuable works of art in their own right. Soon people were pulling the posters down almost as soon as they were put up and today an original Toulouse-Lautrec poster in mint condition - rare indeed as they were usually printed on cheap paper - can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although Henri's mom gave him a reasonable allowance to live on, Henri's income from his art was enough that he put it in a separate account. Unfortunately Henri liked to live well, and he was often short of cash.

Because of his health problems, when Henri was young he spent much of his time with his mother, grandmother, and sisters. So unlike many young men of the era he was quite comfortable socializing with women as equals. When he began frequenting the Paris establishments that catered to - ah - "gentleman's interests" - he became friends with the ladies above and beyond any professional association. Often Henri had no real fixed abode - he might stay at his studio, friend's homes, or his mother's Paris apartment - but for a while he took up residence with the ladies in one of Paris's better know maison close, and while there produced many of his most famous paintings as he watched the ladies relax in their off hours.

Henry's lifestyle was not a very healthy one. Like most people of that time and place, he consumed wine regularly, and he also drank absinthe, the alcoholic staple of the bohemian. It was not the supposed poisonous nature of the fée vert what caused much of Henry's later problems but rather his enthusiasm for the American cocktail. He not only knocked them back himself with élan but also became a quite adept barman, sometimes performing the role at friends' parties and receptions. There he would whip up an impressive number of drinks in short order and lay the guests flat on the floor.

By 1898 it was clear Henri was becoming unstable. He began to be clearly delusional and believed people were conspiring against him. Henri's friends, themselves by no means staid fuddy-duddies, were worried for his safety, particularly when he began firing a pistol in his apartment and told his friends he had been attacked by spiders. But when he began stuffing gasoline soaked rags into the toilet and setting them ablaze they knew something had to be done and fast. Diagnosing illnesses a hundred or so years later is problematical, but alcoholism compounded by the delirium tremens (which can cause formication - that's formication) was certainly a major cause of Henri's symptoms.

How Henri ended up in the mental hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine outside of Paris is not known in detail. One story is he was practically kidnapped as he walked out of his studio door and was hustled off screaming. Another version of the story is he finally realized he was in such bad shape that his family members convinced him to go voluntarily. His letters reveal that Henry himself realized he was in trouble and understood that his relatives and friends were trying to help even though when he was with them he would fly into rages and incoherent spittle flinging diatribes.

Whether his admission was voluntary or not, once in the hospital, Henry wanted out. This, though, was a day where patients' rights were minimal and even into the twentieth century involuntary committal sometimes took no more than a family member and a physician signing some papers. Certainly, the hospital was scarcely a hardship, and Henri had a private room albeit with a 24/7 guard outside the door. Still, he was soon writing letters to his friends about his "imprisonment" and asked them to do what they could do to get him out.

That said, the physicians in Europe in that day were the best there were and when reading correspondence or reports from Henri's doctors, the reader is struck at how responsible they were. As in all cases of alcoholism, the best (i. e., only) remedy is to stop drinking until the physical addiction of the alcohol is lost. In the sanitarium he was permitted no alcohol, and Henri's friends also worked to keep him away from booze. The magnitude of Henry's problem was evident since he asked some of his friends to sneak in the odd bottle (requests they ignored), and once in desperation, he downed a bottle of mouthwash.

But away from booze, Henri showed rapid improvement and eventually rumors began to spread that Henry was cured and was indeed being held prisoner. Whether this was so was - as are all immutable and unshakable truths - a matter of opinion and definition. Because of the laws of the time, Henry could not leave until the doctors deemed it wise. But Henry was permitted to go on supervised visits outside the hospital, and after a couple of weeks he was past the first phase of recovery. He was permitted to receive visitors with little restriction.

But Henry wanted out, and after the editor of the art magazine L'Echo de Paris visited him and wrote an article saying that Henri seemed perfectly sound, the doctors met and issued a report that 1) yes Henri was much improved, 2) for him to continue to improve he could not return to the milieu which put him in the hospital in the first place, and 3) it was best if Henry stayed on for a few more weeks. By today's standards the advice was perfectly reasonable, and Henri agreed to stay at the hospital. He was released three weeks later, and his total time in the hospital was ten weeks, again a quite reasonable time for treatment by today's standards for someone in Henry's serious condition.

There were, though, more problems with Henri's health than just booze. Almost certainly he had contracted syphilis - which by the late nineteenth century had reached epidemic proportions - and his mental problems may have been aggravated by the disease reaching its tertiary stage. Although he was only in his mid-thirties, Henri had at least one stroke, and he began to have more and more problems walking. In early 1901, he realized it was best for him to return to his mother's estate at Malromé where there were servants to help care for him.

By late summer Henri was bedridden and declining. On September 8, his father showed up at his bedside. "Good Papa," Henri said, "I knew you wouldn't miss the kill." Those weren't his last words though. When Alphonse took off his shoelaces and began snapping at flies that were buzzing around the room, Henry simply muttered, "The old fool!" He died at 3 a. m. the next morning.

References

There are many books about Henri and two from the mid to late twentieth century are biographies proper. Both can be recommended for a reader wanting to learn more about Monsieur Henri.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, Julia Frey, Viking (1994). This is now considered the definitive biography and is detailed and informative.

Toulouse-Lautrec: a Definitive Biography, Henri Perruchot, World Publishing Company (1958). The first real biography, very readable, but with less explicit documentation than the later book. A major virtue of this earlier volume is the large number of good size photographs.