Toulouse-Lautrec: 1864-1901

With his prints, posters, paintings and drawings, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) immortalised the nightlife of Belle Époque Paris and helped establish Montmartre as an enduring centre of fascination for artists and pleasure-seekers around the world.

Fascinated by this shadowy world, the diminutive descendant of an old French aristocratic family was drawn to the cafés, cabarets, dance halls and brothels of Paris’s entertainment district. Their inhabitants offered him what he himself described as a “theatre of life”. His highly sophisticated paintings, lithographs and posters depict not only famous performers such as Yvette Guilbert and Aristide Bruant, but also lesser-known acrobats and dancers whose gaunt bodies reveal the physical demands of their daily lives.

More than any other artist, Toulouse-Lautrec captured the Belle Époque pursuit of fleeting pleasures, during years when Paris seemed to be dancing on the edge of a volcano. On one side was the demi-monde, poised between intoxication and despair; on the other, a class of gentlemen in top hats smoking cigars. Toulouse-Lautrec left unforgettable images of both, marked by sharp observation and compassion.