Art: Ennry

With the notable exception of Duveen Bros. Inc., who frequently lend pictures to other exhibitions but never admit the general public to their own, major Manhattan art marts have come to consider themselves semi-public institutions, frequently stage expensive, elaborate loan exhibitions that can bring them nothing but prestige. Well in the top rank of such shows was one that opened in Manhattan’s Knoedler Galleries last week, the most complete showing of the works of Toulouse-Lautrec theU. S. has ever seen.

Long a favorite of the world’s literati, Artist Lautrec might be just as popular with the general public if the details of his extraordinary private life had been half as widely publicized as those of unbalanced Vincent van Gogh.

The Vicomte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born in the little city of Albi in 1864. His father, Count Alphonse, was a former army officer, an ardent horseman, an eccentric. Each morning in the Bois de Boulogne he used to ride a brood mare to the fashionable”Cascade” restaurant, dismount, milk his horse, drink his breakfast, ride home again.

Young Henri drew pictures almost as soon as he could read, but at the age of 14 he broke a leg. The fracture was never properly set and a year later his other leg was broken too. Toulouse-Lautrec became a dwarf, shortsighted, blubber-lipped, with a normal trunk and tiny, shriveled limbs. Only 4 ft. 6 in. high, he could not lift an ordinary suitcase off the ground, had special sausage-shaped luggage designed for him. Fortunately, although his aristocratic family could not stand the sight of him, they kept him well supplied with cash.

In Paris, where he studied for a while in the stiff, classical studio of Leon Bonnat, Toulouse-Lautrec’s appalling ugliness not only kept him from his own class but left him uncomfortable in the presence of fellowartists. Only in the half-world of Parisian cafes and dance halls did the Vicomte feel at home. Of these, from 1885 to his death in 1901, Toulouse-Lautrec became the greatest delineator. Strumpets, vaudevillians and circus performers admired him for his talents, acid wit and title, but they did not call him M. le Vicomte, or even Henri. Because the paunchy Prince of Wales (Edward VII) was the darling of Paris, because French gentlemen wore monocles and London clothes, and British music hall stars filled the stages, they called him ‘Ennry.

With sausage suitcase, easel and the iron-tipped cane that he bitterly called “my buttonhook,” ‘Ennry would frequently move into a brothel, stay there several months, painting most of the time. In the mid-90s ‘Ennry began to drink seriously. A great artist but no gourmet, he liked to swig a mixture of Scotch whiskey, rum, absinthe and cheap brandy. Paris dandies of his day frequently carried sword canes; the Vicomte de Toulouse-Lautrec’s cane held liquor. In 1899 he was confined in a sanatorium as an alcoholic, was led out in the company of a guard. After ‘Ennry had hobbled back with the guard blind drunk behind him, the guard was changed. In 1901, his health broken from drink, he returned to his mother at the Chateau de Malromé, one of the family’s properties near Bordeaux. There, at the age of 36, he died.

Van Gogh sold only two pictures in his life. Toulouse-Lautrec never sold any, although his cheap lithographs and the posters he made for circuses and music halls had considerable success. In 1922 his mother left the great mass of her son’s work to the little museum at Albi, where he was born. Though medieval Albi is one of the most picturesque towns in France, it is far from the usual tourist track. Only because the Albi museum badly needs money for repairs to the Lautrec collection* was last week’s show made possible. To the museum fund will go the proceeds of the 50¢ admissions. In return it has contributed 14 paintings, 11 drawings. Highlights of the show:

¶ The Count Alphonse driving his spanking coach and four at Nice. Painted by Henri at the age of 17.

¶ M. Desire Dihau, the Opera’s famed bassoon player, reading his newspaper in the garden. Because Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec’s artistic hero, had superbly painted M. Dihau blowing his bassoon, Lautrec made friends with the entire family in order to admire the picture.

¶ Au Moulin Rouge, lent by the Chicago Art Institute. A group skillful as a Renoir, showing Toulouse-Lautrec and his friends surrounded by many of the famed tarts of Paris.

¶ May Belfort, British vaudevillian, singing “I had a little cat, and I’m very fond of that,” with a kitten in her arms.

¶ Blackmailer Boileau, paunchy Parisian prototype of gossip-columnists, comfortably seated at a bar behind his mustache and his absinthe frappe.¶ M. de Lauradour, with magnificent pink whiskers and meerschaum pipe.

Manhattan esthetes, hoping that this show would match the success of the famed van Gogh exhibition of two years ago, were already planning a Toulouse-Lautrec Ball for December 9, ignoring the fact that the bitter, dwarflike ‘Ennry, who hated snobbism and artistic pretense, would have felt more perfectly at home at the Minsky burlesque or a Broadway Big Apple contest.

*Because the Albi loans arrived in such bad shape compared to the slickly presented Lautrec pictures from Chicago, Cleveland, etc. the Knoedler Gallery dug into its own pocket to reframe the lot.