Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), known as Toulouse-Lautrec (French: [tuluz lotʁɛk]), 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 sometimes decadent affairs of those times.

In addition to alcoholism, he developed an affinity for brothels and prostitutes that directed the subject matter for many of his works, which record details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris.

He took thermal baths at Amélie-les-Bains, and his mother consulted doctors in the hope of finding a way to improve her son's growth and development.

[7] Toulouse-Lautrec's parents were first cousins (their mothers were sisters),[9] and his congenital health conditions have often been attributed to a family history of inbreeding.

[16] During a stay in Nice, France, his progress in painting and drawing impressed Princeteau, who persuaded Toulouse-Lautrec's parents to allow him to return to Paris and study under the portrait painter Léon Bonnat.

[18] Toulouse-Lautrec's mother had high ambitions and, with the aim of her son becoming a fashionable and respected painter, used their family's influence to gain him entry to Bonnat's studio.

After Bonnat took a new job, Toulouse-Lautrec moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon in 1882 and studied for a further five years and established the group of friends he kept for the rest of his life.

[19] With his studies finished, Toulouse-Lautrec participated in an exposition in 1887 in Toulouse using the pseudonym "Tréclau", the verlan of the family name "Lautrec".

[20] In 1888, the Belgian critic Octave Maus invited Lautrec to present eleven pieces at the Vingt (the 'Twenties') exhibition in Brussels in February.

[7] Tucked deep into Montmartre in Monsieur Pere Foret's garden, Toulouse-Lautrec executed a series of pleasant en plein air paintings of Carmen Gaudin, the same red-headed model who appears in The Laundress (1888).

In 1890, during the banquet of the XX exhibition in Brussels, he challenged to a duel the artist Henry de Groux, who criticised van Gogh's works.

[25] Fellow painter Édouard Vuillard later said that while Toulouse-Lautrec did engage in sex with prostitutes, "the real reasons for his behaviour were moral ones ... Lautrec was too proud to submit to his lot, as a physical freak, an aristocrat cut off from his kind by his grotesque appearance.

In 1892 and 1893, he created a series of two women in bed together called Le Lit, and in 1894 he painted Salón de la Rue des Moulins  [it; nl] from memory in his studio.

Lautrec's love for cooking stemmed from his family upbringing and early childhood where he first learned the importance of culinary values.

300 guests were invited, with a claimed 2,000 cocktails served, all accompanied by side dishes of gourmet food, with Lautrec working diligently as the sole chef and bartender, dressed in a white linen jacket, complete with a freshly shaved bald head and no beard.

[41][39] Lautrec was part of a group of gourmands, initially formed by Gustave Geffroy (1855–1926), the historian of the Impressionists, and Claude Monet, who met up every Friday night for dinner at Drouant, a restaurant in the Palais Garnier neighborhood.

[48] On 9 September 1901, at the age of 36, Toulouse-Lautrec died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at his mother's estate, Château Malromé, in Saint-André-du-Bois.

[28] After Toulouse-Lautrec's death, his mother, Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, and his art dealer, Maurice Joyant, continued promoting his artwork.

Toulouse-Lautrec's style was also influenced by the Ukiyo-e genre of Japanese woodblock prints, which became popular in the Parisian art world.

[51] Toulouse-Lautrec excelled at depicting people in their working environments, with the colour and movement of the gaudy nightlife present but the glamour stripped away.

[citation needed] His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, in scenes of Parisian nightlife, or as intimate studies, has been described as alternately "sympathetic" and "dispassionate".

[citation needed] Toulouse-Lautrec's skilled depiction of people relied on his highly linear approach emphasising contours.