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Inspiration from Artists Week 67 : Edward Wesson and Toulouse Lautrec.
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Posted
Yes, an astonishing output over so short a period. Here's his portrait of his friend, Vincent Van Gogh...
He was interested in photography, so we have many photos of him. Here he is painting a caricature of himself...
...and one of his father, an old-ball character by all accounts. A man who liked dressing up....
...at the Moulin De La Gallette (a dancehall), he's sat next to La Goulue, the Moulin Rouge dancer his posters made famous...
...some paintings I like. 'La toilette'...
...at the Moulin Rouge...
...at the Rue Moulins, the brothel where Lautrec stayed, painting many intimate pictures of the girls...
Many of his critics thought he didn't finish all his paintings, he refers to this in his quotes above. This painting, 'An Englishman at the Moulin Rouge', is a prime example of this.
Areas are just sketched in, and parts of the canvass left bare. For Lautrec, he'd finished...
He was interested in photography, so we have many photos of him. Here he is painting a caricature of himself...
...and one of his father, an old-ball character by all accounts. A man who liked dressing up....
...at the Moulin De La Gallette (a dancehall), he's sat next to La Goulue, the Moulin Rouge dancer his posters made famous...
...some paintings I like. 'La toilette'...
...at the Moulin Rouge...
...at the Rue Moulins, the brothel where Lautrec stayed, painting many intimate pictures of the girls...
Many of his critics thought he didn't finish all his paintings, he refers to this in his quotes above. This painting, 'An Englishman at the Moulin Rouge', is a prime example of this.
Areas are just sketched in, and parts of the canvass left bare. For Lautrec, he'd finished...
Posted
I’m just catching up with this and read through your excellent intro Lew. What a fascinating artist. I knew a little about him and was familiar with his Moulin Rouge posters obviously but not to any extent with his portraits which I find wonderful. I also like the ‘unfinished’ look of some of them, and can see similarities/influences of Degas and Van Goch.
I very much admire and like an artist who paints what is around them, and hasn’t or in his case I guess wasn’t able to travel far afield, but used successfully what was around him. His portraits are intimate and sympathetic. Will delve further. Thank you, great choice and depth of info!
Posted
A few final pictures for Toulouse Lautrec. I find the photographs from his life of interest, helping to place him in his time. Here's Henri working in his studio. It would be easy to think of him as a hedonist, with his drink problem and time spent with prostitutes, but the main focus of his life was his art. How else could he
have produced such a vast amount of work in twenty years?
Here he paints a portrait in a garden, this was at a health centre where he went for treatment.
The picture he painted...
One of his posters of Jane Avril, the English singer and dancer at the Moulin Rouge...together with the reference photo he used.
This brings to mind the many discussions on the forum about copying...many, many artists do it. Toulouse Lautrec's work, however he created it, was always his own.
And one last image...a caricature he made of himself in 1882...
Here he paints a portrait in a garden, this was at a health centre where he went for treatment.
The picture he painted...
One of his posters of Jane Avril, the English singer and dancer at the Moulin Rouge...together with the reference photo he used.
This brings to mind the many discussions on the forum about copying...many, many artists do it. Toulouse Lautrec's work, however he created it, was always his own.
And one last image...a caricature he made of himself in 1882...
Posted
The syphilis was probably inevitable, given the places he frequented and painted; the drinking - important to remember that he would have been in considerable pain for most of his life; the drink helps - at the time. It was also a heavy-drinking environment, Parisian café society. The important thing for us now is the work, and its high quality (and fertile quantity); his private income made it unnecessary for him to conform to collectors' and gallerists' prejudices, too; those who had to earn a living from their work (then as now) have to shape it to the punter's requirements to greater or lesser extent. It's only when you get to the eminence of a Lucian Freud that you can paint a portrait of the Queen making her look as if she was having a damn' good chew on a wasp...
The artists I feel sorry for are - well, me! A lot of my stuff looks as if I've painted it to please public taste, but I haven't, at alll - I painted it to please me; it's just a pity that my tastes tend to be somewhat conventional.... I'd love to be avant garde, but have never caught up with it; ah well; I'm not Toulouse, nor yet Ted Wesson: I know my place!
Anyway: passing on - anyone remember the painting(s) by Rolf Harris, based on Toulouse Lautrec, and placing Harris in the role of (I think) Aristide Briand, from one of Toulouse's posters? Is it safe to mention RH yet....? Most of the work he did for the tv series in which that painting appeared was pastiche, as he freely admitted, but - I'm not at all sure I could have done it. I hope the time will come when we can separate Harris's peculiar personality from his work - given how many painters and artists we now call great had lives of great moral dubiousness; but the recent attacks on the sculptures of Eric Gill make one wonder if that will ever be possible. I don't think the question arises with any of the artists so far shown in our series here - most led lives of exemplary virtue, or at least of vices that hurt no one but themselves.
I do think it's necessary to separate the personality from the work they produced: the former may be of interest of biographers and historians, but it's the latter which interests me. Does the personality form the work - must be part of it, but so far as I can tell, it's not the most important element.
Posted
Interesting points Robert. I'll admit I find it hard to separate the man/woman from their work. You mention Eric Gill, a prime example, I love his work and wish I could produce something similar myself...a vain hope. But the man himself?? Let's not go there. Suffice to say, despite my admiration of his art, I won't be suggesting him for this thread. Maybe someone should. As you say, and it's a strong point, it's the work that survives. Where there's an interesting story for the artist personally, I like to know it as well as the art. Lautrec's story interests me, it gives a wider picture of the times he lived in, and this time and place teems with artists I admire. Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Mucha, Renoir and many others.
In Lautrec's words he often mentions his size, and recounts the story of some unknown and unkind wag calling his walking stick his 'pencil.' He was 5ft 1inches tall, at a time when the average height for a man in France was 5 foot 4 inches, so averages being what they are, there would have been many men his size, and shorter. His size would not have prevented his being called up for military service. But Lautrec himself said that had his legs been normal sized he would never have become a painter.
Syphilis was the great leveller, many men and women, high-born or low, died from it, or the mercury they attempted to treat it with. Manet was another who died from this disease.
I never did rate Rolf Harris's art. As a glutton for art in all its forms I would watch his programs. I vaguely remember him talking about Lautrec (this memory holding because of my admiration for Lautrec, not Harris). He went on to produce a Moulin Rouge 'style' painting (at least he thought so), that I recall being as far from Lautrec's art as you can get. Maybe not the one you recall. Harris is another I have no interest in doing for this thread.
Lautrec had no need to earn a living from his paintings, neither did Manet, so they did their own thing. It occurs to me that I have no need to earn a living from my pictures. I make no attempt to sell them and go into spasms of horror if anyone attempts to commission work from me. So I've no excuse not to do my own thing. Except that I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the search that interests me. I too know my place...I'm no Lautrec or Manet.
Edited
by Lewis Cooper