French Post-Impressionist Painter and Printmaker, 1864-1901 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a direct descendant of the counts of Toulouse, was born on Nov. 24, 1864, at Albi. His eccentric father lived in provincial luxury, hunting with falcons and collecting exotic weapons. Henri began to draw at an early age. He suffered a fall in 1878 and broke one femur; in 1879 he fell again and broke the other one. His legs did not heal properly; his torso developed normally, but his legs were permanently deformed. Encouraged by his first teachers, the animal painters Rene Princeteau and John Lewis Brown, Toulouse-Lautrec decided in 1882 to devote himself to painting, and that year he left for Paris. Enrolling at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he entered the studio of Fernand Cormon. In 1884 Toulouse-Lautrec settled in Montmartre, where he stayed from then on, except for short visits to Spain, where he admired the works of El Greco and Diego Velazquez; Belgium; and England, where he visited Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. At one point Toulouse-Lautrec lived near Edgar Degas, whom he valued above all other contemporary artists and by whom he was influenced. From 1887 his studio was on the Rue Caulaincourt next to the Goupil printshop, where he could see examples of the Japanese prints of which he was so fond. Toulouse-Lautrec habitually stayed out most of the night, frequenting the many entertainment spots about Montmartre, especially the Moulin Rouge cabaret, and he drank a great deal. His loose living caught up with him: he suffered a breakdown in 1899, and his mother had him committed to an asylum at Neuilly. He recovered and set to work again. He died on Sept. 9, 1901, at the family estate at Malrome.  Related Paintings of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec :. | Dance to the Moulin Rouge | Dance at the Moulin Rouge (nn03) | Woman Pulling Up Her Stocking | The Painter's Model : Helene Vary in the Studio | Moulin Rouge |
Related Artists:
Orpen, Willam
Irish, 1878-1931
Lundbye, Johan Thomas
Danish Painter, 1818-1848 Danish painter. He studied at the Kongelige Akademi for de Sk?nne Kunster, Copenhagen, under Johan Ludvig Lund (1777-1867) and the animal painter Christian Holm (1804-46) between 1832 and 1842. Early on he was influenced by the ideas of the art historian N. L. H?yen, especially his concept of a truly national school of landscape painting. Kalundborg Church (1837; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) depicts a historical monument familiar to all Danes, and one that had a particular nostalgic attraction for a painter born in Kalundborg. The picture is both sharply naturalistic and emphatically painterly. In Landscape Near Arres? (1838; Copenhagen, Thorvaldsens Mus.) Lundbye was more occupied with the representation of light and space. There is no anecdotal element; the lake, the open sky, the low hills, the ancient cairn, the cattle and the playing children sum up a typical Danish summer landscape. His larger canvases emphasize openness; flat expanses of land terminate in low tree-fringed horizons below vast skies. They have little of Constable's temperament or the broadness of Corot but are close to the elegiac mood of Caspar David Friedrich and Johan Christian Dahl. Danish landscape painting during the mid-1830s was greatly influenced by Romanticism
ZIMMERMANN Dominikus
German sculptor, Bavarian school (b. 1685, Wessobrunn, d. 1766, Wies) German sculptor, Bavarian school (b. 1685, Wessobrunn, d. 1766, Wies)Architect, stuccoist and painter, brother of Johann Baptist Zimmermann. For the first two decades of his creative life, from about 1705, he worked mainly as a builder of altars and as a marbler. His most important commission came from the Benedictine abbey of Fischingen (Thurgau), for which he made six artificial marble altars with scagliola inlays (1708-9). Similar altars, mainly in Swabia, are attributed to him or known to be his work; their construction shows the influence of Johann Jakob Herkommer, with whose work Dominikus became familiar while living in Fessen (1708-16). Between 1709 and 1713 he worked with Johann Baptist Zimmermann at the Buxheim Charterhouse, producing artificial marble altars and stuccowork that is characterized by the botanical accuracy of the plant motifs.