Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

“ They will ever remain in the realm of nearly perfect workmen with literary apperceptions. Toulouse-Lautrec, because of his love of formal distortion221 for its own sake, probably comes nearer the higher level: there is in his work a slight æsthetic element. Degas will ever remain the piece of old velvet in a frame; Louis Legrand, the illustrator of the bachelor clubs; Forain, the expositor of life’s pretensions.
It is these men who have given the greatest impetus to realistic illustration in all countries. Viewed from this standpoint they were a salutary, as well as a diverting, manifestation. ”

“ She is maleficence incarnate. Just fancy this bird of the night set forth by a sympathetic brush, endowed with a life that overflows the canvas, and you see this grande dame strut by, the embodiment of evil, yet a duchess à la Sir Johsua, though à rebours. It is a sinister art which recalls the genius of Toulouse-Lautrec. With Lautrec the work of Luks has certain affinities. He may never have studied that painter; rather is it a temperamental resemblance, a certain tolerant way of seeing men and things. But Luks is not so cynical as the Frenchman. ”

“ As a delicate boy of fourteen he injured both his legs so that they failed to grow. His father, Count Alphonse de Toulouse, had no patience with his weakling heir, but his mother encouraged him to paint. In 1885 he turned his back upon the academic style and, taking hints from the free brushwork of the Impressionists and from Japanese designs, Lautrec began to paint his pictures of Parisian night life, circus performers, and cabaret entertainers. Degas, at first hostile toward him, eventually declared, “Well, Lautrec, I can see you are one of our trade.” ”

“ No stricture can attach to his incompleteness: his life was too short for realisation. That the Cubists did not altogether achieve their desire does not detract from the importance of their departure from established precedent. Their reaction was a salutary event in the evolution of modern painting. The field of art was being overrun by the decadents of Impressionism and Cézanne, by the imitators of Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas, by those academicians who follow in the wake of every movement long after its methods have been accepted as vital. ”

“ Dorine. A woman in love needs a heart of steel.
Mariane. But haven't I kept it free for my lover
Whose task it is to win me from my father?
Dorine. What! If your father is a mad fanatic
Whose love for Tartuffe is completely lunatic
And who has blocked the match you are now bewailing,
Is your lover to be damned for failing?
Mariane. But am I to display how deeply I'm bitten
By rejecting Tartuffe like one who's love-smitten?
Am I, because of Valere's strength and beauty,
To renounce my modesty and duty?
And would you have me show my heart to all . . . ?
Dorine. No, no, not at all. ”

“ The fact is that the great dramatist, whose genius was never more signally shown than in transmuting other men’s lead into gold, found a play, dull enough in itself, which he fashioned into that masterpiece of humour, the comedy of Henry the Fourth. The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth was possibly written by William Tarleton, a comedian who flourished in Elizabeth’s reign. ”

“ But I tell you, they will shudder. And you yourself will say, "Henri has never played so well."
Host. What are you going to play? What? Do you know what, Léocadie?
Léocadie. I never know anything.
Henri. But has anyone any idea of what an artist lies hidden within me?
Host. They certainly have an idea, and that's why I tell you that a man with a talent such as yours doesn't go and bury himself in the country. What an injustice to yourself! and to Art!
Henri. I don't care a straw about Art. I wish for quiet. You don't understand that, Prosper ”

“ Mister Tartuffe! Oh ho! No mean proposal!
Mister Tartuffe, sure, take it all in all,
Is not a man to sneeze at—oh, by no means!
'Tis no small luck to be his happy spouse.
The whole world joins to sing his praise already;
He's noble—in his parish; handsome too;
Red ears and high complexion—oh, my lud!
You'll be too happy, sure, with him for husband.
MARIANE
Oh dear! ...
DORINE
What joy and pride will fill your heart
To be the bride of such a handsome fellow! ”

“ Lautrec's productions, alluring and powerful as they are, can by no stretch of the word be so scribed. He does not seek to attract you by joyousness of colour or grace of pattern, but rather to compel your attention by the force of his realism or the curiosity of his grotesqueness. For his posters are at once realistic and grotesque; they are delineations of life as seen by a man who, possessing the most acute powers of observation, is poignantly impressed by the incongruities of modern life, the physical peculiarities of modern men. ”

“ And so, let addle-pated pedants (one does not exclude the other) claim that the deformed, the ugly, the grotesque should never be imitated in art; one replies that the grotesque is comedy, and that comedy apparently makes a part of art. Tartuffe is not handsome, Pourceaugnac is not noble, but Pourceaugnac and Tartuffe are admirable flashes of art. ”

“ Amongst men love becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse. Amongst old men it turns to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was at once an old man, a man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of a real love, he needed like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without the magic lustre of that unattainable pearl he could only have either passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity. ”

“ All the fetes and rejoicings having ended, the count of Toulouse, one day craving the permission of the Catalonian knight, took his daughter by the hand and led her into another room, and here, with all the tenderness of a kind father, asked her what were her sentiments respecting this young Catalonian. She firmly and deliberately told him, she would rather live single all her days, than be united to a man whose principles and manners were so directly opposite to her own. ”

“ It seems to me a specially interesting example of a remarkable talent applied to a very congenial subject. The posters of Lautrec are something more than works of art; they are human documents strangely eloquent of their moment. For this reason, their value may be more permanent than that of the productions either of Chéret or Grasset, delightfully fantastic as are the former, charmingly decorative as are the latter. ”

“ Consider the basis of Tartuffe; an obscene pedant, a red-faced hypocritical wretch, who, palming himself off on a decent and refined family, tries to drive the son away, marry the daughter, corrupt the wife, ruin and imprison the father, and almost succeeds in it, not by clever plots, but by vulgar mummery, and by the coarse audacity of his caddish disposition. ”

“ Setting Pierre Lescot at work on the lovely western wing of his new Louvre, he rushed over the land, building and beautifying at Saint-Germain, Compiègne, Fontainebleau, Blois, Chambord, posing always as the patron and prodrome of the Renaissance in France. At least, he could say truly of himself, "On verra qu'il y a un roi en France;" but besides the throne and his pet foolishnesses, he handed down nothing worth owning to his son—that Henri II. of heavy fist and light brain, slow of thought and of speech, cold, uncongenial, commonplace. ”

“ The legendary love which that charm inspired in Henri II had in it a troubadourian parade and a chivalresque effacement. In its fervor there was devotion, in its passion there was poetry, there was humility in its strength. At the Louvre, at Fontainebleau, on the walls without, in the halls within, on the cornices of the windows, on the panels of the doors, in the apartments of Henri’s wife, Catherine de’ Medici, everywhere, the initials D and H, interlaced, were blazoned. Dianne had taken for device a crescent. It never set. ”

“ This explains why Thuillier carried his head high when Theodose had the audacity that evening to put opinions into his mouth.
In art—and perhaps Moliere had placed hypocrisy in the rank of art by classing Tartuffe forever among comedians—there exists a point of perfection to which genius alone attains; mere talent falls below it. There is so little difference between a work of genius and a work of talent, that only men of genius can appreciate the distance that separates Raffaelle from Correggio, Titian from Rubens. ”

“ He took pattern by Goethe, and was impressed by Leopardi; he was judiciously classic, but his romanticism was neither hidebound nor inhuman; he apprehended Heine and Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza and Sainte-Beuve, Joubert and Maurice de Guérin, Wordsworth and Pascal, Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, Burke and Arthur Clough, Eliza Cook and Homer; he was an authority on education, poetry, civilisation, the Song of Roland, the love-letters of Keats, the Genius of Bottles, the significance of eutrapelos and eutrapelia. In fact, we have every reason to be proud of him. ”

“ Taylor’s characters really meet, really bear upon one another. In contempt and hatred, or esteem, reverence, and melting tenderness, they challenge, bend, and transfuse one another.
Strafford never alters, never is kindled by or kindles the life of any other being, never breathes the breath of the moment. Before us, throughout the play, is the view of his greatness taken by the mind of the author; we are not really made to feel it by those around him; it is echoed from their lips, not from their lives. ”

“ Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord Henry was leaning over his chair. ”

“ No man of more passionate and curious talent than Aristide Bruant has ever devoted himself to the business of light amusement, and it was no doubt quite congenial to Lautrec to advertise the performances which he gives in his cabaret. ”

“ Elmire. Then all your earthly love has been overthrown?
Tartuffe. My breast does not hold a heart made of stone.
Elmire. I'm sure that all your thoughts are on salvation,
And nothing less holds any fascination.
Tartuffe. The love that attracts us to what's eternal
Does not stop our love for the merely temporal.
Our senses can be quite easily charmed
By the perfect Earthly works that God has formed. ”

“ Dorine. Must he be there the same moment you pass
Like those who attend only to be seen?
Orgon. Your advice isn't wanted. Don't intervene.
Tartuffe is on the path to salvation,
And that is a treasure past calculation.
This wedding will bring blessings beyond measure,
And be crowned with great sweetness and pleasure.
Together you will live, thriving on love
Like new-born babes, or a pair of turtledoves.
You will never be found in angry debate
For you will find all that you wish in this mate.
Dorine. She'll only make him a cuckold, I'm sure.
Orgon. What?
Dorine. ”

“ Why should he be miserable, Henri? The truth is, you mistake his character. I do not wish to make you think ill of your friend; but Adolphe is one of those men whom adversity will improve. You and our father have rather spoilt him between you; he is too proud, too apt to think that everything should bend to his wishes: he has yet to learn that in this world he must endure to have his dearest wishes thwarted ”

“ At length, in August, 1667, "Le Tartuffe," so long suppressed, appeared on the stage, and in the depth and power of its composition left all authors of comedy far behind. The art with which the "Impostor" is made to develop his real character, without any of the usual soliloquies or addresses to a confidant, for the benefit of the audience, has been always admired as inimitable. The heart of a man who had least desired, and could worst bear close investigation, is discovered and ascertained, as navigators trace the lines and bearings of an unknown coast. ”

“ Lautrec was deservedly popular with his fellow students; his excellent wit, delivered in a strident voice, and punctuated with the gesticulations of a pair of extraordinarily short arms, always proved entertaining to those in the midst of whose company he happened to be.
His best work is probably to be found amongst his posters and portraits. His illustrations, except in his earliest work, as seen in Paris Illustré, more frequently show those crude vagaries of form and colour, which would point to an unevenly balanced judgment. ”

“ The first three acts of the Tartuffe, the only ones then written, made their appearance at the memorable fêtes known under the name of "The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle," given by Louis the Fourteenth at Versailles, in 1664, and of which the inquisitive reader may find a circumstantial narrative in the twenty-fifth chapter of Voltaire's history of that monarch, The only circumstance which can give them a permanent value with posterity is their having been the occasion of the earliest exhibition of this inimitable comedy. ”