Toulouse-Lautrec's Commiseration

Behind Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s depiction of Vincent van Gogh’s alcoholism in his pastel drawing (Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1887), the French artist could be sympathizing with his friend’s poignancy in drinking to avoid solitude, because Lautrec himself also drank heavily, probably to shun the misery of his physical defects.

Lautrec was a serious inebriate. According to biographer Julia Frey, his daily routine centered on drinking. Having woken up with a hangover, he would start his day in a neighboring bistro with ‘substantial quantity of wine’ (Frey 17). Then after his work in the studio, he would go for an aperitif in a bar before dinner, and linger in his favorite taverns and cabarets in Montmartre until dawn (Frey 17-9). He also had two café tables in his studio, where he concocted his own versions of ‘American cocktails’ to share with visitors (Frey 17). Rumor even had it that he carried a hollow cane filled with absinthe, in case he wanted a sip between bistros (Conrad 55).

Toulouse-Lautrec’s addiction was very likely caused by his physical deformity. Since two accidents in his childhood, the unfortunate French artist suffered from an abnormally short height of merely four feet eleven inches as well as two crippled legs that forced him to walk with a duck-like stagger (Frey 21). This did not only bring him mockery both inside and outside his family, but also ruined the relationship with his parents. Toulouse-Lautrec’s father, a count proud of the family’s aristocratic lineage and keen on horseback hunting, was disappointed to have a frail, malformed heir (Cabanne 17), and hence neglected Lautrec since his childhood, leaving him deprived of paternal love (Frey 23). Lautrec’s mother, on the other hand, was over-protective to the child because of his malady, inducing occasional resentment from her son (Frey 21-3). Having grown up with the above distress, Toulouse-Lautrec very likely chose to seek consolation in alcohol. On one hand, drinking could desensitize him of his physical pain and the psychological agony it caused. On the other hand, it also worked as part of his Bohemian lifestyle to rebel against his parents, challenging his controlling mother as well as his conservative and snobbish father. Therefore, we would not be surprised that Lautrec intentionally let his mother know about his severe drinking habit even though he surely knew this would agitate her, just in order to prove to her that he had become an adult (Frey 26). Nor would we find it incomprehensible that Lautrec only drank more often when his father expressed shame and anger towards Lautrec’s alcoholism: ‘Why doesn’t he go to England? They scarcely notice the drunks over there’ (qtd in Wallace 56). Lautrec used drinking as a weapon against his misery.

With such poignancy behind his alcoholism, Toulouse-Lautrec could easily understand van Gogh’s bitter reliance on drinking to console solitude, as Lautrec listened to van Gogh with empathy in the café almost every night when they were in Paris (Tralbant 213; Hatanson 107). It is therefore very likely that Lautrec captured van Gogh drinking in the portrait to show his commiseration to this Dutch fellow. Hardly did he know, however, that their similar dependence on drinking led them both to tragic ends in their lives. Just like van Gogh, Lautrec suffered physical and psychological decline under the detriment of alcoholism-addiction, and passed away at an early age of almost thirty-seven, the same age when van Gogh died eleven years later. Linking the tragedies of the two alcoholics, the Portrait of Vincent van Gogh could only heighten our sympathy when we take another look at the canvas.