Toulouse-Lautrec The Formative Years 1878-1891 (1991)

This book examines the formation of the characteristic features of Toulouse-Lautrec’s style and subject matter. Its analysis of his early creative evolution is based on a revised chronology and on an investigation of the relation of his art to its artistic, intellectual, and social context. Lautrec’s initial conservative and aristocratic tendencies emerge in his first body of work, the animal and sporting subjects. He continued to pursue relatively conventional aspirations during a prolonged academic career, which lasted at least throughout 1886. It was only during the period from late 1885 to 1888 that he began his gradual progression towards a more avant-garde style, through a series of experiments with progressive styles and modern urban themes. For the first time, his career as an illustrator for the popular press, and the social attitudes reflected in contemporary popular illustration, are here stressed as the catalyst in his adoption of a more radical art. In 1889-90 Lautrec reached the first phase of his maturity, developing a distinctive personal style and assimilating the Realist themes of his illustrations into major canvases like Au Bal du Moulin de la Galette and Au Moulin Rouge, La Danse. From 1891 Lautrec moved into the formally more abstract second phase of his maturity. His use of increasing stylistic distortion to enhance the expressiveness of his Realist subjects climaxed in his first poster, La Goulue au Moulin Rouge . This book is intended for scholars, graduate and undergraduate students of art history; art collectors and dealers; the general reader with an interest in art history.