Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was the heir of an aristocratic family, his mother Adele and his father Alphonse being unhappily married cousins. Born in 1864 out of an “angel” of a mother and a “dashing”, nature-loving and mostly absent father, as attested by Julia Frey in Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life (Frey,11), Toulouse-Lautrec developed a strong emotional tie with the feminine members of his family, especially after the death of his one-year-old brother in 1868, and an ambivalent relationship with his father, about whom he felt both resentment for his absence and fascination by his glamour(Frey, 15). His strong attachment to his mother became apparent at a very early age, as a letter he wrote when he was eight can prove: “When I asked you not to go, I had no idea of how much it hurts to be separated from one’s mother. I need you every minute, and will feel much better when I can see you again” (Frey, 54). Apart from his precocious mastery of the written language in expressing his most tender feelings, his outspoken love stands as proof of his unusually powerful attachment to and dependence on his mother’s presence.
His father, though mostly absent because of his unquenched love for hunting, was preoccupied with his son inheriting his aristocratic values, as evident from his words on a falconry book he gave to him in 1876: “If, one day, you should experience the bitterness of life, dogs and falcons and, above all, horses will be your faithful companions and help you to forget a little.” (Murray, 50). Little did he know though, that just two years later, his hopes for his son would be broken, as his unusually fragile bones causing a fall off a chair and a wrong step during a stroll with his mother to leave Lautrec permanently crippled (Murray, 51). Nonetheless, there are traits that the painter undeniably inherited from his father, as attested by Julia Frey: his theatrical, extravagant behavior, his love for drawing, sketching, animals and horses. In addition, his confinement during the long months of recovery grew in him a tenacity his father hadn’t known (Frey, 97). And thus, it would be his drawing pencil and paint brush that would carry him to unexpected heights.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s ability to use words and images in conveying his feelings of love towards his family in a very moving and gentle manner was extremely developed from a very early age. The adjoining drawing is a self portrait he drew on a letter to his Great-Aunt Josephine, accompanied by the text:
“Look at that shape absolutely lacking in elegance, that big behind, that potato nose…”He is not good-looking, and yet, after knocking at the door, […] it climbed the stairs as fast as its legs (broken twice, poor legs!…) allowed him. Crossing the rooms and knocking at Aunt Josephine’s door,[…] it hugged like a jack-in-the-box toward Aunt Josephine’s neck…but the yappings of the little pack had changed into tail-waggings of joy….” (qtd. Murray, 54)
This incredibly sensitive letter by Lautrec reveals not only an extremely strong attachment to his family, but also a kind, optimistic nature that would keep him away from self-pitying and from those who pitied him throughout all his life. The lack of physical elegance he mentions in his letter is shadowed by his modesty and by the elegance of his phrases, his nobility of heart pervading his awareness of his deformity and his love for his family. And it is this nobility that continued to accompany him even when his life in Montmartre took on a bohemian character.
One of Lautrec’s most famous bon mots regarding his nobility was uttered in 1896, in a bar, where two ladies next to him were talking about ‘a rather pitiful-looking dog’ whose hips shook from hip displasia. The owner of the dog, though agreeing that he wasn’t ‘beau’, insisted however that he was purebred. Her friend, incredulous, laughed at her: “Have you taken a look at his ugly fur and twisted feet? He makes you feel sorry for him”. The dog’s owner, turning to Lautrec, said: “Tell her, Monsieur, that my dog can perfectly be ugly and still be pedigreed.” Lautrec, getting down from his high barstool and standing up to his full four feet eleven inches, saluted her with a charcoal-stained hand, murmuring, “You’re telling me!” (qtd. Frey, 425). The anecdote speaks volumes about Lautrec’s wit and sense of humor, but just as his letter to his Aunt Josephine, it has a touch of modesty and even melancholy. His exclamation ‘You’re telling me!’ hints perhaps to his regret that even though he was a ‘purebred’, he couldn’t live as one because of his deformity and had to face the pity and ill will of those like the friend of the dog’s owner, who couldn’t see beyond appearances and judged him for what he was not. As the painter himself declared, “Je ne serai jamais plus qu’un pur-sang attelé à un tombereau”(qtd. Neret, 184)- “I will never be more than a purebred hitched to a farm cart”. He had to resign to his fate and try to make the most of an existance that sett off with most odds against him, dragging him from the freedom he was supposed to enjoy into a bleak world of pain and pitying.Images:
The Countess Adele-Zoe-Marie-Marquette Tapie de Celeyran, the painter’s mother, Gilles Neret, Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 185.
Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec on a horse, 1896. Julia Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: A life, p. 96.
Self-caricature, riding on a drawing pencil, 1882. Toulouse-Lautrec: A life, p. 96.
Self-Portrait from Letter, 1879. Gale Murray, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Retrospective, p. 54.