Toulouse Lautrec And Gustave Courbet Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Toulouse Lautrec paintings of dancehall performers and prostitutes are personal and humanistic. They reveal the sadness and humor hidden behind rice powders and gaslights. Their influences were long lasting. To say the least, there would be no Andy Warhol, if there was no Lautrec.

En plein air Toulouse Lautrec paintings soon began after Toulouse moved to Paris in 1882. He often posed sitters in the Montmartre garden of his neighbour, Pere Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favourite models was a prostitute nicknamed Golden Helmet. She is seen in the painting The Streetwalker.

Yvette Guilbert and Jane Avril, two of Toulouse's favourite cafe concert stars were featured in one of his Toulouse Lautrec paintings, Divan Japonais. Yvette appeared at the upper left corner of the composition, with her head cropped at the top edge, her body elongated, wearing her trademark clothes.

Gustave Courbet paintings challenged convention by rendering scenes from daily life on a large scale previously reserved for historical paintings. These works included The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Omans. Omans was Gustave's native village in the Franche-Comte in eastern France and it was where this group of paintings was set.

Gustave painted himself at the center of the universe in one of his Gustave Courbet paintings done in monumental canvas, The Painter's Studio. In the artwork, he was paradoxically painting a landscape within the confines of his studio. In the accompanying catalogue was included his Realist Manifesto, proclaiming his fidelity to subjects drawn from modern life.

Leaving the Omans subjects and embracing modernity was the description for Gustave Courbet paintings during the 1850s. In 1866, Gustave submitted Woman with a Parrot to the Paris Salon, as a painting of a nude that its conservative jury could accept. Gustave's nudes was unmistakably modern as opposed to the idealized nudes by Academic artists. For this, he was lauded by his supporters for painting the real, living French woman.




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