Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa , commonly known as just Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times.

Toulouse-Lautrec is among the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period, with Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin.

In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house, La Blanchisseuse, his early painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million and set a new record for the artist for a price at auction. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. November 1864 – 9. September 1901
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec photo
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: 13   quotes 1   like

Famous Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

“I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally… It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like adorning them with wanton hairs, rounding them off and giving them a bright surface… - A painter in embryo….- Write me a line soon. I am feverish with anxiety.”

Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 60 - quote in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Summer of 1881
his friend Etienne Devismes had just finished a novel 'Cocotte', and asked Lautrec to illustrate it. Lautrec made twenty-three pen and ink drawings and sent them to Devismes with a letter

“I have always been a pencil.”

Quoted in: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, ‎Riva Castleman, ‎Wolfgang Wittrock (1985) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: images of the 1890's . p. 44
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“When my pencil starts moving, it must be allowed its head or - bang! - nothing more happens.”

Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 61/62 - in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Late Summer of 1881

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

“Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it! [And then probably with a fourth sniff as a break] Eh? What? Isn't that so, my dear chap?”

according to Henri Perruchot: 'And then - he would make a joke - stuttering and lisping, with a sniff like a laugh at every three words, or some half melancholy comment in his own particular vein'
Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 76

“I am quite incapable of doing them [making landscapes], even the shadow. My trees look like spinach and my sea like heaven knows what.... [the Mediterranean landscape was] the devil to paint, precisely because it is so beautiful.”

young Lautrec comments his own paintings of the landscape, when he was c. 15 years old.
Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 46 - remark to his friend Etienne Devismes - in Nice, 1879

“The Mirlitons in the Place Vendôme, opposite the column! What a crush! A lot of people, a lot of women, and a lot of nonsense! It's a crush made up of gloved hands manipulating tortoiseshell or gold lorgnettes; but it's a crush all the same!”

Lautrec visited in the Spring of 1885 several exhibitions in Paris, he made a note of his impressions. His spontaneous criticisms were irreverent, with a certain irony. 'Le Mirliton', a Paris cabaret, was opened in 1885 by Aristide Bruant
Source: 1885-1895, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 83 - from a note of his impressions

“I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record.”

Quoted in: Henry O. Dormann (2009) The Speaker's Book of Quotations, Updated and Revised. p. 26
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“Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired.”

Quoted in: Peter McWilliams (1997) Love 101: To Love Oneself Is the Beginning of a Lifelong Romance. p. 23
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