French artist Henri Matisse used Auguste Rodin, who was 30 year older, as a constant source of inspiration for his sculptures. The Matisse-Rodin exhibition at the Rodin Museum in Paris until the end of February, revisits the link between the two great masters.

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The Spoiled Child, 1765, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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A Young Man in a Hat, 1750s, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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Still Life with a Vase of Lapis, a Globe, and Bagpipes. Oil on canvas Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draftsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an oeuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec is known along with Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin as one of the greatest painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie’s auction house a new record was set when “La blanchisseuse”, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for $22.4 million U.S.

Portrait of Monsieur Delaporte at the Jardin de Paris, 1893

Throughout his career, which spanned less than 20 years, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works. His debt to the Impressionists, in particular the more figurative painters Manet and Degas, is apparent. His style was also influenced by the classical Japanese woodprints which became popular in art circles in Paris. In the works of Toulouse-Lautrec can be seen many parallels to Manet’s detached barmaid at A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the behind-the-scenes ballet dancers of Degas. He excelled at capturing people in their working environment, with the colour and the movement of the gaudy night-life present, but the glamour stripped away. He was masterly at capturing crowd scenes in which the figures are highly individualised. At the time that they were painted, the individual figures in his larger paintings could be identified by silhouette alone, and the names of many of these characters have been recorded. His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, scenes of Parisian night-life, or intimate studies, has been described as both sympathetic and dispassionate.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style which is highly linear and gives great emphasis to contour. He often applied the paint in long, thin brushstrokes which would often leave much of the board on which they are painted showing through. Many of his works may best be described as drawings in coloured paint.

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Leda and the Swan, 1741.

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Madame de Sorquainville 1749 Oil on canvas Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Cavalry Battle - Oil on canvas - Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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Venus Consoling Love, 1751, canvas, National Gallery of Art at Washington D.C.

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Seated Nude, drawing, 1738.

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The Toilet of Venus, 1751, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Girl Blowing Soap Bubbles - 1674 - Oil on canvas - Châteaux de Versailles

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Oil on canvas The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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The Visit of Venus to Vulcan, 1754, Wallace Collection in London.

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Julien Clerc - Si j’étais elle

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