LAUTREC GRAFFITI
One of my passions over the last few
years has been my cartooning and documenting the graffiti (I prefer to refer to
it as free street or alley art) in my city. That having been said, it was only
recently that I discovered that one of my favorite artists from the late 19th
and early 20th centuries — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — was also a
graffiti artist and cartoonist. Now, I have seen graffiti on buildings, in
alleyways, in Montmartre that people will insist were done by Lautrec…but I
think not. He did from time to time scrawl drawings or caricatures on the walls
of various bistros and such (as did Utrillo), but no alley art has ever been
documented. What there are however, are drawings done by a very young
Toulouse-Lautrec on the walls of the orangery (a greenhouse where orange trees
are grown) at the Château du Bosc dans l’ Aveyron, one of the family estates
were the artist spent many vacations from early childhood right up until the
time of his passing, portraying his early impressions of horses (a passion of
his) and various relatives or people he knew as a child.
I have not been able to accurately date
the following pencil sketches although I believe they, with the exception of
one, predate his first tragic fall, breaking his left leg, on May 30, 1878.
Already by the age of thirteen, Henri had shown a strong interest and a
developing talent for drawing. My belief that these drawings predate 1878 is
based on the fact that some of the sketches are located very high up on the
walls, done no doubt with the assistance of a ladder — a height inaccessible to
Lautrec for many years thereafter. Thus, they are perhaps among the earliest
preserved Lautrec drawings.
The one drawing that I think is from a
different time, done by an older Henri, is the last drawing in the series, of
circus performers, no doubt done from memory, from a circus he may have visited
with his mother some time later. Notice that the style is much more refined
than the other graffiti in both style and detail.
(Photographs courtesy of Aoi Tokugawa)
