Toulouse-Lautrec: “To think I never would have painted if my legs had been just a little longer!”

Toulouse-Lautrec

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“To think I never would have painted if my legs had been just a little longer!”
Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born into a noble family. His father was a Count. Henri had a disease since he was child that affected the development of the bones; and so he suffered fractures in the legs and could not grow. The rest of his body developed normally, and therefore his image was disproportionate and deformed.

Due to his physical deformation, he felt a social misfit and started to frequent the “immoral” underworld of the Parisian Belle Époque. He also was one of the greatest painters of history.

Lautrec could be nicknamed “a cursed painter,” since as he felt rejected by the world of aristocracy and the most elegant halls of Paris, he took refuge in the environment of vice, the night, marginality, cabarets and brothels (where the aristocracy used to go, by the way). Of course, that world, where he felt comfortable and accepted, had a cost for him: he became alcoholic and depressive. His health deteriorated, and he died at the early age of 37 years old.

His work was a great contribution to modern painting, and one of its most interesting characteristics is his way of achieving the expressivity of the human figure, not by painting it in a realistic mode, but by distorting it. (As we can see in this painting.)

If Lautrec had had longer legs, his life would have been different, and who knows, maybe he would have worked in being “a nobleman.” And if he had not been a “marginal” character, he would not have portrayed with such sensitivity the Parisian underworld.

We can come to the conclusion that his biography is an evidence of the fact that life is not determined by the cards you were dealt, but how you play your hand.

Image: At the Moulin Rouge (1892)

Recommended links:

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Lautrec and the Belle Époque.

Six Paintings: The Posters of Lautrec.

Six Paintings: Lautrec’s Legacy.

The Touch of Lautrec.

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