great photos, good write-ups ( )

In 29 over-sized pages, Robert Burleigh gives a concise and start-to-finish biography of Toulouse-Latrec, while still exhibiting a representative sampling of his work. Henri de Toulouse-Latrec was born in 1864 to a family of aristocrats. He had a weakened skeletal structure and broke both of his legs at a young age. This disease stunted his growth, and he never reached five feet tall. He made up for this by adopting a wonderfully charming wit (and also by being moderately rich). After traveling to Paris to go to school, he improved his artistic skills and started capturing the life and landscape around him.

Henri made a wealth of friends and spent a lot of time at the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre (Paris suburb). So much so that he designed posters for them and the surrounding businesses, as well as painting portraits of all his friends and acquaintances. He died young, but created roughly 6,300 works of art. His style attempted to capture the uniqueness of every subject as well as the lights and motion of everyday life.

Someday, I will replace this book with an actual scholarly biography, but for now, this will do.

Burleigh undoubtedly leaves out some of the more harsh details of Parisian life in the late 19th century. As an artist, I would stereotypically expect some bouts of drug and alcohol abuse, but the author wisely edits those parts out. All in all, it makes a decent coffee table book and an avenue to start looking into one of the first graphic artists.

http://lifelongdewey.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/760-toulouse-latrec-by-robert-burl... ( )

This biography focuses on how T-L captured the sights, sounds, people, and chic of Paris at the turn of the last century. Illustrated with T-L's own work, Burleigh's print fills in the background of this "courageous, fun-loving, witty, and immoral artist." This work will appeal to 'tween and YA readers. ( )