Items related to Henri Toulouse Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is usually portrayed as a debauched aristocrat, cabaret painter, accidental dwarf. Julia Frey's biography, ten years in the making, uses meticulous research to strip away this myth and reveal for the first time the tortured man beneath. During his lifetime and after his death, Toulouse-Lautrec's family shrouded the truth in a haze of distortion, self-righteousness and outright lies. Now, decades later, the discovery of over 10000 family letters fills in the half-truths, to show - a haunted genius, crippled both physically and psychologically by his gothic, pathologically inbred family. The Toulouse-Lautrecs were a close-knit, aristocratic family, and Henri's parents were first cousins. Intermarriage, not incompetent doctors, caused his deformity; and a childhood spent in ceaseless, aimless peregrinations around the family houses, with his wildly eccentric father more absent than not, created a smothering bond between his mother, a manipulative and neurotically pious woman, and her only surviving child. Henri, an energetic and bubbly child, grew into a rebellious, provocative man, who found among the prostitutes and cabaret performers of Montmartre a freedom so shocking and threatening to his class-obsessed family that they burned his paintings and committed him to an asylum for the insane. The life of Toulouse-Lautrec is a story of cruel disability overcome by bounding egotism and fierce humour, of great talent searching for its subject, of alcoholism, self-destructiveness and feverish insecurity. Julia Frey's book leads the reader through two mazes: decadent fin-de-siecle Paris, and the complex struggles of a tormented mind.
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Review:
“Deals seriously and sensitively with Lautrec’s progress as an artist, his academic training and the audacious use he put it to. Almost everyone from Manet to the young Picasso crosses the stage.... A tragic story, but a triumphant one also.” -- George Melly, Mail on Sunday
Book Description:
Julia Frey's definitive biography of one of the best-known artists of the 19th century.
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- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0140247505
- ISBN 13 9780140247503
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages680
- Rating
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