On my walk today I skirted the lake and was reminded of Monet's Lily Pond paintings. Now anyone who knows the lake will find this amusing, strange, risible. No stretch of water could be more unlike those glorious expanses of sometimes shimmering, sometimes mysteriously vague renderings of floating leaves and blossoms.
But Friday evening I had an email from my youngest granddaughter Hannah asking me for some guidance on the divine Claude's best-known paintings as she has just started sixth form and wanted the information for a textiles project. Hence the mere presence of water produced the apparently anomalous thoughts. And as I continued to walk, I considered how I first became interested in 'art', something that remains an important strand in my enjoyment of this life of ours.
In my early teens my mother took me to see John Huston's film Moulin Rouge which is based on the life story of Henrie Marie de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa known as the painter Toulouse Lautrec. Houston was a great director, the film was scintillating, colourful, moving. Lautrec himself was played by a well-known actor called Jose Ferrer, who had already won a best actor Academy award for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac and who spent the film on his knees for reasons you will understand. And thus was my interest in art initiated. I found him a fascinating character, amusing, iconoclastic but sad. And the paintings which appeared in the course of the film swept me off my feet.
Lautrec was born at Albi in southern France in 1864 to parents that were first cousins. The latter part of his name indicates that his family was of the French aristocracy with Counts and Viscounts in its past. He broke his right leg at 13, his left at 14 and they never healed properly owing to some congenital condition, meaning his legs never grew but supported a normal torso. He had started drawing as a child and embarked on painting under the tutelage of a family friend as he was unable to participate in the activities of a normal young man. The family friend specialised in portraying horses and Lautrec followed his lead. He showed such promise that the family friend suggested he be allowed to go to Paris to seek further tuition. Here, initially, he painted landscapes, mainly of Montmartre where he was to live for the next twenty years, but the bohemian atmosphere of his surroundings with its cabarets, clubs, low life characters and prostitutes soon led to him embarking on the works on which his fame rests. He exhibited at various salons and exhibitions and formed friendships with other struggling artists including Vincent van Gogh of whom he painted a portrait.
When the Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) opened he became a regular and was commissioned to design a new poster to advertise the place. The previous poster had been of a pretty young girl on a donkey but Lautrec realised that the best way to project its attractions was to portray what it featured, THE big attraction, the cancan. The poster he produced has passed into history and shows a silhouette in the background of top hatted men and women with elaborate hairstyles. In the foreground is a woman dancing the cancan, legs akimbo in opulent drawers, flaunting her sexuality, and her partner, a tall, skeletally thin man in a black suit and top hat, looking like nothing other than the Dance of Death. The only words are 'Moulin Rouge' across the top, in the top left corner is 'La Goulue' which was the nickname of the woman dancer and means The Glutton and 'Dance every evening'. The man was known as Valentin le desosse - Valentin the boneless - because of his bodily contortions. Instantly the club became filled every night with queues forming. The Prince of Wales, later Edward the seventh was a frequent habitue. Many paintings of the club followed showing the wide range of clientele, the hats, the feather boas, La Gouloue portrayed in a cruel drunken stupor, Valentin, hands on waist, toes pointed, apparently floating, and another dancer the elegant and beautiful Jane Avril, whom he portrayed many times and with whom I'm sure he was in love.
Lautrec was to design many more posters and prints in the ensuing years and is still regarded as one of the great exponents of graphic art. He wished to support himself independently and not rely on the allowance supplied by his mother, who had separated from his father and was herself the subject of two superb and tender portraits, and who would devote the rest of her life to caring and worrying about her son as he embarked on a glittering but often misunderstood career painting the dancers, cabaret performers, drinkers and above all prostitutes that surrounded him. He spent long periods in brothels, sometimes actually living there, which enabled him to portray these women in their most intimate moments, bathing, dozing between clients, painting themselves before a mirror, engaging in Sapphic embraces. He was to publish a set of lithographs of these lost souls in the most honest but tender light called simply 'Elles'. As well as his small stature, Henri was, it has to be said, fairly ugly with thick lips, a bulbous nose, eyes squinting through pince nez. (He drew some savage and grotesque caricatures of himself). But to these women he was simply a man, a man who treated them with respect, more respect than most of their clients. A man, moreover, possessed of unusually large genitalia, a further result of the genetic disorders, who referred to himself as 'a coffee pot with a big spout!'
He continued to paint a large body of work, mostly of the dancers, music hall performers and drinkers he lived among. But his alcohol consumption became an increasing problem. He graduated early from beer and wine to the hard stuff. And soon his drink of preference was absinthe, the green fairy that fries the brain and even a self-created cocktail of absinthe and brandy which he dubbed The Earthquake. In alarm at his declining physical condition his mother, with whom he kept in constant correspondence throughout his life, convinced a tall lugubrious cousin to accompany him on his nightly excursions to keep an eye on his drinking. But Henri had a walking cane which he needed at all times and he had it hollowed out to carry supplies. The pair can be seen in one of the paintings of the Moulin Rouge leaving the club, the odd couple.
He spoke enough English to visit London where he met and was befriended by Oscar Wilde of whom he made a portrait but in 1899 he collapsed as a result of exhaustion and alcoholism and was committed to a sanatorium for three months where he completed 39 circus portraits. He died on September 9th 1901 at the age of 36 on his mother's estate after a collapse in his physical and mental state caused by the alcoholism and syphilis, leaving behind such a vibrant body of work, colourful, distinguished by superb draughtsmanship and humanity. 737 canvases, 275 watercolours 363 prints and posters and 5084 drawings. In 20 active years. Oh yes! And a collection of recipes developed in an enthusiastic involvement in cooking! I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of his paintings and drawings in London in 1961 which I still recall vividly and have a number of books of reproductions, including a catalogue raisonne of his graphic works and a biography. He remains one of my favourites. This period of the Paralympics seems to be an appropriate time to recall a man who fate treated so cruelly in terms of disability, who created such a glorious legacy for us all to enjoy and wonder at. Go to Google and goggle!