Friday, October 29, 2004
Show of Toulouse-Lautrec BeginsFri Oct 29, 3:19 PM ET
More than 250 pictures by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others from the rakish atmosphere of artistic Paris at the end of the 1800s are the first of a series of exhibits the National Gallery of Art will feature to celebrate French painting.
Both art and lowlife characterized the city's Montmartre area art because rents were low for underpaid artists, and lowlifes because they frequented nightspots like the still popular Moulin Rouge.
The Montmartre show will be followed by one on Paul Cezanne and his portrayal of his native Provence in southern France and another on the Dada movement, which began in Switzerland in the early 1900s to mock much of the art that came before.
They will be preceded by a show of pictures from the career of Hungarian-born Andre Kertesz, a pioneer in the photography of everyday life, who did much of his work in Paris and later in New York.
Earl A. Powell III, director of the gallery, announced the program Friday in New York.
A descendant of the once-powerful counts of Toulouse, Toulouse-Lautrec inherited both an aristocratic background and a talent for art from his father the count, a good amateur painter.
The son suffered two falls that badly damaged both legs by the time he was 15, and his mother took the stunted young figure from the family estate near Albi, north of Toulouse, to study art in Paris three years later.
He adopted a Bohemian life in Montmarte that so shocked his noble parents that his father tried, with some success, to protect the family name by getting his son to use pseudonyms.
Toulouse-Lautrec died of alcoholism before his 37th birthday, after producing hundreds of posters many publicizing performers at the Moulin Rouge as well as paintings, watercolors, prints and thousands of drawings.
"He preferred the gaudy, vulgar, somewhat disreputable world of Montmartre to the world of his own social class," says the gallery's announcement.
The exhibit, in Washington from March 20 to June 12, will build around Toulouse-Lautrec's connection with Montmartre. It includes some of the 50-odd paintings he did from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s that depicted houses of prostitution, where he lived for a time. The theme also drew attention from painters Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso.
Although centered on Toulouse-Lautrec, the exhibit will include work by his friends and associates fascinated by similar themes, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edouard Vuillard.
___
On the Net:
National Gallery of Art: http://www.nga.gov
More than 250 pictures by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others from the rakish atmosphere of artistic Paris at the end of the 1800s are the first of a series of exhibits the National Gallery of Art will feature to celebrate French painting.
Both art and lowlife characterized the city's Montmartre area art because rents were low for underpaid artists, and lowlifes because they frequented nightspots like the still popular Moulin Rouge.
The Montmartre show will be followed by one on Paul Cezanne and his portrayal of his native Provence in southern France and another on the Dada movement, which began in Switzerland in the early 1900s to mock much of the art that came before.
They will be preceded by a show of pictures from the career of Hungarian-born Andre Kertesz, a pioneer in the photography of everyday life, who did much of his work in Paris and later in New York.
Earl A. Powell III, director of the gallery, announced the program Friday in New York.
A descendant of the once-powerful counts of Toulouse, Toulouse-Lautrec inherited both an aristocratic background and a talent for art from his father the count, a good amateur painter.
The son suffered two falls that badly damaged both legs by the time he was 15, and his mother took the stunted young figure from the family estate near Albi, north of Toulouse, to study art in Paris three years later.
He adopted a Bohemian life in Montmarte that so shocked his noble parents that his father tried, with some success, to protect the family name by getting his son to use pseudonyms.
Toulouse-Lautrec died of alcoholism before his 37th birthday, after producing hundreds of posters many publicizing performers at the Moulin Rouge as well as paintings, watercolors, prints and thousands of drawings.
"He preferred the gaudy, vulgar, somewhat disreputable world of Montmartre to the world of his own social class," says the gallery's announcement.
The exhibit, in Washington from March 20 to June 12, will build around Toulouse-Lautrec's connection with Montmartre. It includes some of the 50-odd paintings he did from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s that depicted houses of prostitution, where he lived for a time. The theme also drew attention from painters Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso.
Although centered on Toulouse-Lautrec, the exhibit will include work by his friends and associates fascinated by similar themes, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edouard Vuillard.
___
On the Net:
National Gallery of Art: http://www.nga.gov
