Inside, Outside – The World of the Artist (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)

Established in 1994, THE COURSE offers innovative and exciting lectures in Art History, Literature, Music and Opera.

In INSIDE, OUTSIDE, The World of the Art, Nicole Mezey will look at how creativity reflects the personal and professional experience of the artist. This series focuses on a different artist each week, looking first at the life behind their creations – the mental asylum in which Richard Dadd produced some of his greatest works, the pressure of eight children on the output of Frans Hals – before moving on to explore their work and the way it reflects that experience.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901), Moral Penury

Count Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa may have been born an aristocrat, but exiled from his class, he passed his life in the bars, brothels and cabarets of Montmartre. There he found companionship and not only captured the personalities and decadent spirit of the “fin de siècle”, but developed lithography into a medium for the diffusion of high art.