After the Impressionists Talk 5: Toulouse-Lautrec

Onsite at the Ashmolean and online via Zoom.

This is the fifth and final in our series of talks on Post-Impressionists as Change Makers.

The first Impressionist exhibition was in 1874 and caused disruption in the Parisian art world. By the end of the century artists had explored its innovations, liberating them from the conventions of the past. Their dramatic changes, achieved out of the movement, would have wide-spread repercussions, establishing Paris as the centre of the modern European stage.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born into a family of southern aristocrats. But his physical disabilities did not dissuade him from pursuing an artist’s career that required him to live in Paris.

In this talk, Juliet discusses the change in Lautrec's subject matter from familiar scenes of country hunting at home, to the life of brothels and risky cabarets and how this gave rise to the concept of the ‘naughty nineties’.

Through helping his subjects become known, he contributed to the development of modern poster design.