Petrushki's Journey into the Blue - Chapter 17 - Toulouse-Lautrec - One must be able to bear oneself

A month before the pandemic began, we went on a journey by bus and train through Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland. The destination was the exhibition Protest! by Derek Jarman in Dublin. More about that in the 1. Chapter Dreaming into the Blue with Jarman. The goal was this exhibition, but then we wandered around and visited 21 exhibitions. It became a journey through time, from the baroque to the modern. We learned about the infinite facets of how art is created. We discovered stories and met friends. In this chapter, we are still at the very beginning of our journey in Paris. After El Greco we go to the next exhibition at the Grand Palais: Toulouse-Lautrec Résolument Moderne - Resolutely Modern from 9 October 2019 - 27 January 2020

Toulouse- Lautrec verkleidet

Toulouse-Lautrec - a small, bearded, bespectacled man, casually leaning on a cane, that's how he flew around as an image somewhere in my inner jumble. A bit dusty for a long time, because the man with the cane and hat seemed like a mild elderly gentleman to me. And everywhere hung these posters of Parisian vaudeville life, in every pizzeria of my youth, not to mention any French wine depots. Aristide Bruant. Forever the red scarf of the bohemian. Something similar happened to me with Frida Kahlo's self-portraits. If they appeared anywhere, I looked past them, through them. They became advertisements. Colourful and empty. Bombarded with them from all sides. First I had to rediscover their beauty and depth, so buried were they by their deco presence everywhere. The work of Toulouse-Lautrec is so familiar to us that we lose sight of how bold and courageous he was as an artist, how much new he brought to his time.

This “old man” was very young and died very young and had little time to create his great art. He painted a lot with charcoal, quick strokes, sharply observed scenes full of life and movement. And on cardboard, the paint dried faster. The great power of his work gave me a time machine. Straight into the multi-layered world of Parisian bohemia and his own life in it. In that time of changes, alterations, inventions. Suddenly there was artificial light on the streets of Paris at night. In the music halls. Everything lit up, "Everything enchanted". That was the title of the first room in the exhibition.

The exhibition in Paris two years ago at the Grand Palais began with these photos, which can be seen above. And there I could immediately see his youth, his liveliness, his devotion to the play, his delight in disguises and changing roles, his open curious gaze and his mischievousness.

Photography was an ally for Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. From 1880 onwards, the medium spread rapidly. He did not take photographs himself, but friends took pictures for him of his models or of the performances in which he dressed up, changed roles, created new ones, made pictures out of dreams.

And he painted with a photographic eye. What was special about his way of painting and drawing were the perspectives and picture details that had been unusual until then and his unadorned view of reality. This had not existed in this form until that time. Painted snapshots of great intensity and truth.

This is the only self-portrait of Toulouse-Lautrec that does not show him caricaturistically distorted. The young, about 19-year-old Henri Toulouse-Lautrec shows himself in the mirror. With distance and detachment. The utensils on the ledge resemble a still life and look like a balustrade. One senses a serious look, but eye contact from painter to viewer is hardly possible. The eyes are hidden behind the glasses of the pince-nez. He does not reveal himself with this self-portrait, neither his face nor his body.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was born on 24 November 1864. The family comes from an old noble family. One line can be traced back to the 9th century. In order not to diminish the fortune by dividing the inheritance, they married among themselves. Toulouse-Lautrec's parents were also cousins, their mothers were sisters. This is how Henri Toulouse-Lautrec caught this hereditary disease that made him stop growing from the age of 10. Even as a child he painted and drew a lot. There is a story on the German Wikipedia page that I find very touching: when he was a child, they had to take away his crayons in the evening so that he would finally go to sleep. He would then secretly get up again, pick the burnt coal out of the fireplace and continue drawing with it. His parents had separated after the early death of their second son, each living their own life. The father must have been quite mad, a wild hunter and horseman and he also liked to dress up and was very crazy. He knew some fine artists to whom he introduced Henri and who gave him advice. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec grew up in various castles, with many people, aunts, uncles, cousins. He is said to have been lively and witty. When he became weaker due to illness, his mother protected and cared for him. Hunting and riding were important, Henri was also a good rider until the illness broke out. As a youth, he loved to paint horses.

Henri Toulouse -Lautrec Man saddles his horse 1879

Toulouse-Lautrec Gazelle 1881

Toulouse-Lautrec, white horse Gazelle, 1881

This horse portrait that he painted at the age of 17 enchanted me very much. It pulsates. The colours are beautiful.

A year later he painted this picture.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Étude de nu, femme assise sur un divan, 1882

Since the spring of 1882, through his studies with Bonnat and Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec had the opportunity to work with models . We see a pensive young woman, her finger on her lower lip. It doesn't look as if the depiction of the nude is the important thing here, rather it seems to be the person. The woman seems to me somehow defenceless and timid in an unfamiliar environment. Interesting, the way it is painted, with early skill: the contrast between the black stockings and the light skin on which the light partially falls. The many shades of colour of the divan, the grey tones of the background.

Friendship with Vincent van Gogh

His teacher Bonnat becomes professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the summer of 1882. He does not take Lautrec with him. Lautrec is disappointed, especially because Bonnat thinks he is a bad at drawing. He switches to Cormon, who is not as respected as Bonnat, but he takes an interest in his students and rents a studio for them at Montmatre. In Cormon's class he meets friends with whom he would remain close throughout his life. One of them is Vincent van Gogh, 11 years his senior.

Although they are so completely different in character, background, way of life, the two have an intense friendship during the last four years of Van Gogh's life. Their passion for art brings them together, they respect each other's work, they exhibit together, exchange paintings and write letters to each other. (Unfortunately, none of these letters exist any more).

Lautrec is worldly, sophisticated with a biting wit, Van Gogh sullen, withdrawn, with occasional violent outbursts of rage. They must have been an odd couple, the little man with the stick and hat and the gaunt fellow with the red shaggy beard.

Their art is as different as their natures: "Van Gogh's jagged brushstrokes and dizzying swirls of colour seemed charged with electric current; his expressionist art was feverish and agonising. Lautrec's superb draughtsmanship and incisive satire seemed effortless. But both artists believed that the subject of a painting was less important than its execution, and that the painter must be committed to an ideal vision of art. Lautrec, one of the first to recognise Vincent's talent, introduced him to the intoxicating pleasures of absinthe and the variétés of Montmartre."

Quoted from The Madman and the Dwarf: Van Gogh and Lautrec by Jeffrey Meyers Also source of this section on the friendship between Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this portrait of Vincent van Gogh with pastels on cardboard in 1887.

The impressionist painting is in shades of blue, orange and yellow. Van Gogh is sitting at a table with a glass of absinthe in the Café du Tambourin. Here Van Gogh could settle his unpaid bills with paintings. Bent forward, he sits there with his hands clenched into fists. Behind him is a blue zinc table with empty glasses, one can see a multi-paned window and a swirl of yellow lines that seems to suggest the effects of absinthe. Roger Fry, the English art critic who coined the term Post-Impressionism, noted that Lautrec had imitated Van Gogh's "colourful hatchings and comma-like strokes" to depict his anxious mood.

The last meeting between Van Gogh and Lautrec took place on 6 July 1890 in Theo's Van Gogh's Paris flat. Lautrec had dropped by unexpectedly. They made jokes at the expense of a funeral assistant they had just met on the stairs. Vincent was in an unusually good mood and wrote to Theo four days later: "I have very fond memories of this trip to Paris. Very remarkable is the picture by Lautrec, the portrait of a woman playing the piano "Portrait de musicienne". I was deeply touched by it."

Van Gogh was talking about the picture on the left. It is from the year 1890. Another picture shows Misia Natanson at the piano. A fascinating personality. Immortalised in paintings by Lautrec, Renoir, Vallotton, in literature by Proust and Cocteau. Ravel dedicated a waltz to her. She will certainly appear again in the chapter on Lautrec and women. That was another diversions, a little diversions, so to speak. Seven years lie between the two pictures.

On 27 July, only three weeks after their last meeting, Van Gogh shot himself in Auvers near Paris.

It will continue with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, women, the circus, the Variété, Paris, female clowns male and female, stars in the Parisian night sky...