Toulouse-Lautre c : a life / Julia Frey

Includes bibliographical references (p. [494]-576) and index.

"I expect to burn myself out by the time I'm forty,'' vowed Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), whose alcoholism, sexual debauchery with prostitutes and probable syphilis led to his death in 1901 at age 36. In the fullest portrait of the great French artist to date, Frey traces Toulouse-Lautrec's self-destructiveness to psychic pain resulting from congenital dwarfism and the conflicts of his parents-first cousins from a wealthy, aristocratic, inbred family-who used him as a pawn in their endless power struggle. The combination of a pious, overprotective, controlling mother and a grandiose, anti-clerical, manic-depressive father produced an ambivalent son who sought refuge in art. In oils, lithographs and posters, Lautrec penetrated people's masks and exposed undercurrents of despair, poverty and exploitation beneath the Belle Epoque's superficial gaiety. Drawing on hundreds of previously untapped letters and family documents, Frey has produced a vivid, engrossing, often astonishing biography that delves into Toulouse-Lautrec's obsession with gems and hygiene, his mania for publicity, his love-hate relationship with his mother and troubled relations with other women.

English.