Frases de Toulouse-Lautrec

„A feiúra, onde quer que esteja, tem sempre um lado belo; é fascinante descobrir beleza onde ninguém a consegue ver.“

„Talvés, mas eu não me incomodo com isso.“

„Eu tentei desenhar de forma realista e não ideal. Pode ser um defeito, pois não tenho piedade das verrugas e gosto de enfeitá-las com cabelos soltos, para torná-las maiores e mais brilhantes.“

I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally. It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like to adorn them with stray hairs, to make them bigger and more shiny.
em carta para Etienne Devismes (1881), como citado in: Keywords of nineteenth-century art - Página 41, Christine Lindey - Art Dictionaries, 2006, ISBN 0953260917, 9780953260911, 240 páginas

„I'm very much alone all day, I read a litle but, in the long run, it gives me a headache. I draw and paint as much as I can, indeed till my hand grows tired, and when night begins to fall I hope Jeanne d'Armagnac [his cousin] will come to my bedside. She does sometimes, and cheers me up and plays with me, and I listen to her talk, without daring to look at her. She is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful.“

The previous Summer, at Barèges, while he lay with his leg in plaster, Lautrec had often been visited in the evening by his cousin, Jeanne d'Armagnac
Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 53 - written note in Nice, Winter of 1880

„I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally… It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like adorning them with wanton hairs, rounding them off and giving them a bright surface… - A painter in embryo….- Write me a line soon. I am feverish with anxiety.“

Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 60 - quote in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Summer of 1881
his friend Etienne Devismes had just finished a novel 'Cocotte', and asked Lautrec to illustrate it. Lautrec made twenty-three pen and ink drawings and sent them to Devismes with a letter

„I have always been a pencil.“

Quoted in: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, ‎Riva Castleman, ‎Wolfgang Wittrock (1985) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: images of the 1890's . p. 44
undated quotes

„When my pencil starts moving, it must be allowed its head or - bang! - nothing more happens.“

Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 61/62 - in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Late Summer of 1881

„There are two young Englishmen in the next rooms to ours who are superb; their two sisters, looking like umbrellas, are here too, dressed in pink, with a little friend in blue with red hair. She is a type I have tried to draw on horseback but have not succeeded.“

Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 56 - in a letter, Winter 1881 from Nice, where he stayed with his mother

„Lautrec was still satisfying his rather classical art-teacher Cormon in Paris. The unreal conventions of Cormon imposed and discouraged him, according to Henri Perruchot“

1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot

„I can't do it, I can't do it. I simply can't help turning a deaf ear to it and banging my head against the wall - yes - and all for an art that escapes me and will never know all the trouble I have taken on its behalf.“

Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 80 - c. 1882-1883

„I could never have believed that such kindness existed: to receive my wretched drawings and then thank me into the bargain. And you need not be so scrupulous about my drawings. Just use those you like.... But, I am madly, crazily happy at the thought that your prose [Devismes novel 'Cocotte'], like so many fireworks, will frame my daubs, that you should have offered me a helping hand on the arduous road towards getting known…“

Quote from Lautrec's letter, after he received Devismes' letter full of praise for the 23 illustrations he had sent
Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 61 - in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Summer of 1881

„Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it! [And then probably with a fourth sniff as a break] Eh? What? Isn't that so, my dear chap?“

according to Henri Perruchot: 'And then - he would make a joke - stuttering and lisping, with a sniff like a laugh at every three words, or some half melancholy comment in his own particular vein'
Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 76

„I am quite incapable of doing them [making landscapes], even the shadow. My trees look like spinach and my sea like heaven knows what.... [the Mediterranean landscape was] the devil to paint, precisely because it is so beautiful.“

young Lautrec comments his own paintings of the landscape, when he was c. 15 years old.
Fonte: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 46 - remark to his friend Etienne Devismes - in Nice, 1879

„The Mirlitons in the Place Vendôme, opposite the column! What a crush! A lot of people, a lot of women, and a lot of nonsense! It's a crush made up of gloved hands manipulating tortoiseshell or gold lorgnettes; but it's a crush all the same!“

Lautrec visited in the Spring of 1885 several exhibitions in Paris, he made a note of his impressions. His spontaneous criticisms were irreverent, with a certain irony. 'Le Mirliton', a Paris cabaret, was opened in 1885 by Aristide Bruant
Fonte: 1885-1895, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 83 - from a note of his impressions

„I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record.“

Quoted in: Henry O. Dormann (2009) The Speaker's Book of Quotations, Updated and Revised. p. 26
undated quotes

„Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired.“