Class details
Join Nick Pearson for an art history lecture on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Monday 31 January
6.30 – 8.30pm
£10 per person (including light refreshments)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from an old aristocratic French family. His eccentric military father was the Count of Toulouse. He liked dressing up as a Scotsman, going to the circus and galloping with his own mail coach and horses. Henri was unable to follow in his father’s military footsteps after falling off his horse as a child. The falls stopped his legs growing. Instead, he became an artist.
In 1882 he arrived in Paris, with his mother. Before too long he was a regular at the Parisian night spots, bars and brothels. His mother didn’t accompany him! They remained very close until his early death. He is well known for revolutionising the late 19th century lithographic poster. He advertised the Moulin Rouge and other venues. But it is his lesser-known paintings and prints of off-duty cabaret performers and sex workers in the Parisian brothels that are some of the most sensitive works of the period.
In this art history lecture Nick talks about Lautrec’s life and work. It includes his famous posters and many paintings and drawings. There is a very sympathetic depiction from the Courtauld’s collection of his friend, the nightclub performer Jane Avril. We examine one of those Paris brothel paintings, The Salon in the Rue des Moulins (1894). It is now a centrepiece at the Musée Toulouse Lautrec in Albi, near where the artist grew up.
Afterwards Nick emails you a copy of the paintings he referred to so you can use them as an aide memoire
