2 Pierced Gold Plated Enameled Toulouse Lautrec Silhouette Charm Pendants

Description

Pair of two rare Toulouse Lautrec silhouette necklace charms or pendants featuring a pierced gold plated frame with red and yellow enameled accents.

Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse Lautrec Monfa was a 19th-century French painter, illustrator and poster artist, known for his atmospheric depiction of the Parisian underworld. Besides his work as an artist, his height (only 152 cm), and scandalous behaviour in society brought him notoriety.

Born into the aristocracy, Toulouse-Lautrec broke both his legs around the time of his adolescence and, due to the rare condition Pycnodysostosis, was very short as an adult due to his undersized legs. In addition to his alcoholism, he developed an affinity for brothels and prostitutes that directed the subject matter for many of his works recording many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec is among the painters described as being Post-Impressionists, with Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat also commonly considered as belonging in this loose group.

Alternate Bio:
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was the firstborn child and son of an aristocratic family in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France. While destined for a life privilege, he was also the offspring of inbreeding—his parents being biological first cousins—making him predisposed to congenital health conditions.

At age thirteen, young Lautrec fractured his right thigh bone and, just a year later, his left. His bones never healed properly and ceased to grow, dramatically stunting his growth and leaving him physically unable to participate in activities typically enjoyed by young men his age. His unfortunate disability is what ultimately lured him to the bohemian lifestyle and haunts of writers, artists and avant-gardists that thrived in Paris, particularly the margin of society for whom he felt empathy as well as great fascination.

Lautrec’s career as an artist coincidentally overlapped with two major movements in Paris—the birth of modern printmaking and the explosion of nightlife culture—making the city a conducive environment for his creative development, as well as his growing alcoholism, self-deprecating wit and keen caricature’s eye. In fact, Lautrec’s personal circumstances, as well as the cultural and social happenings of his era, manifest so palpably in his work it’s almost as if he was destined to draw the sordid and dissolute out from the shadows and force the rest of society to acknowledge their beauty through his art. He did not exploit nor disguise the imperfections of his subjects but rather humanized their “flaws” by depicting them in such a way that revealed the sadness, as well as humor hidden beneath the rubbish and squalor of their louche lifestyle.

Condition

Very Good – Slight wear

Dimensions

1.375” x 0.75” (Length x Width)