Degas is a pessimist. He has always been a realist, and the realist in this troubled world cannot look through rosy spectacles; acute pessimism becomes the natural result, especially when a great city is the venue. He is the analyst and ironist of the Impressionist group, with whom he has a sympathy of temperament rather than a sympathy of technique. At the present moment there are few artists better known in Paris, yet few who have received so small an amount of official acknowledgment. He has never received an official commission, has refused all decorations, his chief works are to be found in foreign countries. Yet an enthusiastic French critic has summed up the opinion of the art world of France in the striking phrase, “Degas is one of the greatest draughtsmen who have ever lived.”
Ten years ago, when the writer was a student in Paris, the name of Toulouse-Lautrec was known only in connection with various daring and flamboyant posters advertising the exotic attractions of the “Moulin Rouge” and the “Divan Japonais,” and also through extraordinary sketches which appeared from time to time in Aristide Bruant’s feuilleton “Le Mirliton.” Now and again one found a sketch, with his signature, pinned up in an artistic cabaret of the Batignolles quarter. Few had seen him, nobody seemed to have any wish to discover his whereabouts. In the studios he was almost invariably spoken of with contempt as half a fool. He was celebrated in a way, and yet unknown.
He was by no means a fool, for few men have possessed a brighter intellect. His semi-retirance and evident reluctance to appear amidst the crowd were partly owing to a temperament of ultra-refinement, and still more directly the result of a terrible personal misfortune. The story of his life is romantic.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born in 1864 at Albi, a scion of an ancient and illustrious family. His father, the Count de Toulouse-Lautrec, was a wealthy country gentleman, of sporting tastes, a splendid horseman, a crack shot, a sculptor, and a person of most violent and impulsive temper. The son inherited many of his father’s qualities. Generations of ancestors accustomed to the beauties and refinements of such a life in the country had developed at last an artist of peculiar sensibilities. These natural gifts were carefully cultivated, and the boy became a professional artist, who, although he possessed gifts of the most extreme refinement, became through the irony of fate primarily famous amongst his countrymen as a designer of street posters and comic sketches. Those who knew him superficially could not comprehend how his delicate and extraordinary exterior could cover such excellent qualities of heart, such delicacy of spirit. He met with scant respect and few patrons. Happily he was not dependent upon his brush for the means of existence, and his works, when they sold, fetched but little. After his sad and untimely death, the most insignificant sketches were eagerly disputed for and changed hands at large prices.
Physically Toulouse-Lautrec was a weak man, of a highly-developed nervous temperament, with a brain too active for its frail tenement. To such a nature all excess proves fatal, although it is generally such natures that seek excess. In his infancy the artist had the unlucky mischance to break both his legs, and these, badly set, left him malformed for life, a dwarf. Thoroughly embittered, his proud and sensitive soul could not endure the inquisitive stares of the curious with which he was invariably greeted, and for the most part he lived a very solitary life. “Je suis une demi-bouteille,” he would often say to his friends in sarcastic reference to his own unhappy condition.
CAFÉ SCENE ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE · E. DEGAS
He drowned his griefs, as many have done before, keeping in his studio huge stocks of the most fiery spirits and liqueurs, from which he compounded wonderful “cocktails” for the benefit of himself and his friends. It is not surprising that first came the madhouse and then premature death completed this tragedy. Of an excitable temperament he found much pleasure in resorts such as the “Moulin Rouge.” Taverns, theatres, and the circus, found in him a constant patron. These were his schools; and hundreds, one may say thousands of sketches are the result of such teaching. He loved horses as his ancestors had done before him, and he studied their attitudes at the circus, sketching them in barbaric trappings and in eccentric poses. The smell of the sawdust always inspired him. The sketches here reproduced illustrate this phase of his career.
M. Princeteau, the designer of sporting scenes, influenced Lautrec’s style, and became his intimate friend. Forain also counts for something in his development, whilst Pissarro and Renoir were frequent visitors to and critics of the young Impressionist. Perhaps of all men Degas inspired him most, and at times he undoubtedly copied the methods of that master. With serious study he had little to do. He worked in the atelier-Bonnat in 1883, and later on in the atelier-Cormont, where he continued the study of the nude; yet it was only after he had complete liberty and was entirely free from scholastic influence that his style began to form. Then his strong individuality displayed itself, and he became Toulouse-Lautrec as we know him.
