Toulouse-Lautrec -- Beyond the Moulin Rouge

Toulouse-Lautrec: He's one of those artists who immediately creates an association in your mind. A very small man in a bowler hat, the naughty 1890s, the Moulin Rouge. It's by no means the whole story, as the retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, Toulouse-Lautrec: Resolutely Modern, seeks to explain, but it's his depictions of Parisian nightlife that are still the most striking products of a short, hedonistic life.

The Grand Palais is one of those venues that likes to give you a really comprehensive exhibition (quite a French trait). You hardly ever leave wanting more; you usually wish they'd trimmed it down a bit, and this one, with 228 works, is no exception. That said, it's largely an enjoyable and instructive show that takes you through Lautrec's life and art in a comprehensible, rounded chronology.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in 1864 in Albi in southern France. His family was an aristocratic one, but his parents were first cousins, and this inbreeding led to him suffering from weak bones. In his early teens he broke both thighbones in two separate accidents and grew no taller than 1.52 metres -- just about 5 feet.

Here we see him in his heyday, the early 1890s, at the centre of his own view of the Moulin Rouge, walking in the background with his very much taller cousin, Tapié de Celeyran. He is, at it were, in his element in this most celebrated of Paris nightspots. Further to the right is the famed cancan dancer, La Goulue, while a group of Lautrec's friends, including the red-headed dancer Jane Avril, sit around the table. The face looking out at us from the front right, turned green by the garish lights, is that of yet another dancer, May Milton.

This is one of many canvases that have been brought across the Atlantic from US galleries to form part of this show, and there are also a lot of works from the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi. It's not one of those exhibitions where they've just drawn on easily accessible local collections.

There are many moments in this exhibition when you're struck by how ground-breaking an artist Lautrec could be; he was heavily influenced by photography, and that shows in works that seek to capture movement, as well as in unusual cropping and a taste for the snapshot. The degree of invention and simplicity of line in his posters is absolutely fantastic. But he was, it appears, a realist at heart. What can sometimes come across as a satirically cartoonish representation of the denizens of the night seems to have been founded on a desire to represent life the way he saw it.

And there's a real naturalism to many of the early paintings and drawings on display here. Carmen Gaudin was a redhead who obsessed Lautrec in the mid-1880s, and he depicted her in many poses and states of dress, or undress.

Here she's in black, her face expressionless. In other pictures, she sits rather more relaxedly in his studio, wearing a white blouse, or is seen semi-naked from the back in a view that's intimate yet surprisingly unrevealing.

Lautrec met Vincent van Gogh in the early 1880s, and he created this rather delicate pastel of the Dutch artist in 1887, the year before van Gogh left Paris for the south of France.

The stillness and straightforwardness of these depictions contrast sharply with the brio of the Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando), who's about to jump through a hoop from the back of the galloping horse. This is the other side of Toulouse-Lautrec, the one obsessed with speed and progress, something we return to towards the end of the show in depictions that take in cycling, motoring and horse-racing. 

At the heart of this exhibition, though, remain the images of Parisian nightlife, and above all the posters advertising the cabarets and dancers. These may be familiar, particularly that of Lautrec's friend, the red-scarved Aristide Bruant, but it's a recurring pleasure to see them in the flesh, along with preparatory works for them.

Here's La Goulue again, together with the sharp silhouette of Valentin le désossé (the Boneless), both strutting their stuff at the Moulin Rouge. In fact, it's almost all silhouette, really, this poster, isn't it, as if the focus of the photographic lens and the flashbulb were targeted solely at La Goulue in the centre.

But Lautrec extended his oeuvre beyond the cabaret -- and indeed even beyond painting, drawing and posters -- and this show offers a great opportunity to see works that are less often the focus of attention.  For Papa Chrysanthemum at the New Circus, Lautrec collaborated with the designer Louis Comfort Tiffany to produce a Nabi-like Art Nouveau design in vibrant stained glass.  

One room of this show is filled with Lautrec's assured depictions of the English, or at least English-style, gentleman, the Dandy. The painter had a taste for English culture, as, apparently, did his second cousin, Louis Pascal, whom he painted here, looking every inch, dear boy, the man of the world.

The second half of this show is somewhat less gripping; Lautrec's output became perhaps a little less astonishing as his career approached its untimely end, particularly after his parents committed him to a private clinic to counter the damage done by years of prodigious consumption of alcohol.

A highlight here, though, is the remarkable series of almost abstract cloud-like multi-colour lithographs of Loïe Fuller performing her innovative Serpentine Dance in billowing fabrics. We first came across these in the generally disappointing Into the Night exhibition at the Barbican in London a few weeks ago, and they must be the most avant-garde works Lautrec produced.

As at the Barbican, there's a video of one of Fuller's imitators dancing, to give you a feel for what it was like. But unlike at the London venue, it's actually got a soundtrack.

Let's finish with one of Lautrec's late works: a stunning sketch of Miss Dolly, the singing English barmaid at a drinking establishment called the Star in Le Havre that catered to sailors on ships from across the Channel. Lautrec was, it seems, captivated by Dolly on his way through the port in 1899, back at liberty after his clinic confinement. Her fresh face and hair are highlighted by the geometric decor around her.

Two years later, Lautrec was dead, at the age of just 36. 

We rather enjoyed this show. It's clearly laid out, for the most part, even if the explanatory text on the walls is not always particularly easy to follow, either in French or English, and it gives you a fantastic overview of a painter whose work is often not quite what you might be expecting. Do see it if you get the chance. 

Practicalities

Toulouse-Lautrec: Resolutely Modern continues at the Grand Palais in Paris until January 27. It's open Wednesday to Monday from 1000 to 2000, with lates Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays until 2200. Full-price tickets are 15 euros, and to cut down on queuing (always a problem with exhibitions in Paris, particularly at weekends), you can book timed entry online here (website only partially in English) for an extra 1 euro per ticket. Allow yourself a good couple of hours for this extensive exhibition.

The sprawling Grand Palais is on the north bank of the River Seine, just a couple of hundred metres west of the Place de la Concorde. Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau is the closest Metro station, on lines 1 and 13, with Franklin D Roosevelt on line 9 also nearby.

Images

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-95, The Art Institute of Chicago
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Carmen Gaudin, c. 1884, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. © Image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando), 1887-88, The Art Institute of Chicago. © The Art Institute of Chicago
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge -- La Goulue, 1891, Le Signe, Centre National du Graphisme, Chaumont
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Portrait of M Louis Pascal, 1893, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Miss Loïe Fuller, 1893, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The English Girl at the Star in Le Havre, 1899, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi