French Painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1890

This is Giovanni Boldini’s portrait of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Boldini, an Italian expatriate, rendered the French painter in oil. The portrait offers a glimpse into the complex social dynamics of the Parisian art world. Toulouse-Lautrec’s aristocratic background granted him access to circles otherwise closed off to many of his contemporaries. Yet, his physical disabilities meant that his experience of that world was always inflected by difference and exclusion. Boldini seems to capture something of this tension. Note the gloves, the monocle, and the turned head: Toulouse-Lautrec is the picture of bourgeois respectability. But there’s also something askew, as if Boldini aimed to hint at the subversive nature of his sitter, a man who found inspiration in the cabarets and brothels of Montmartre. What does it mean to be an insider and an outsider at once? The painting makes us consider the nuances of identity and belonging in a society marked by both rigid social norms and the stirrings of radical change.