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Model Resting Research Paper

¶ … artworks subject matter, the artist (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec), and the art movement. Look for information on the context found most relevant to the artwork (I think which should be biographical). Consider how a visual description and an analysis of the work, using Elements of Art and Principles f design supports discussion of context. In addition, discuss how initial interpretation from assignment 1 was challenged, changed, and/or supported by the research process. The Artist and his style of painting

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (24 November 1864 -- 9 September 1901), a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator, was a colleague of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin, and was one of the great artists of the Post-Impressionist period .

Physically handicapped (with child-size legs and an unknown genetic disorder, that may have been pycnodysostosis) and constrained by his physical limitations, Lautrec threw himself in his art becoming a lithographer,...

His paintings serve to chronicle much of the way of life of 19th century Bohemian Paris.
Lautrec's most famous poster was the Mouline Rouge.

Lautrec, unfortunately, had a difficult life aggravated by his handicap that caused him to have sexual deficiencies. He became an alcoholic, was briefly institutionalized, and died from syphilis and alcoholism at 36. He is buried in Verdelais, Gironde. (Biography of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901)

Lautrec's work was prolific. In the brief span of 20 years, he created 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, and 5,084 drawings. This is despite the ceramic and stained glass work that he produced, and a certain amount of unknown work (Angier, Natalie (6 June 1995). Lautrec was heavily influenced by the figurative painters and impressionist style of Monet and Degas as well as by the classical Japanese woodprints that were…

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His paintings have often been described as drawings in colored paint; his paint was applied in long thin brushstrokes with much of the canvass showing through.

A Woman Resting (1889)

We see Lautrec's style exemplified most vividly in one his image titled A Woman Resting (1889) (J. Paul Getty museum). The image painted in tempera or casein with oil is of a young woman sitting in a chair that appears to me to be draped with a white furry blanket. We see her from behind, and this viewpoint emphasizes her submissiveness and the spectator's control over subject. A part of her left breast is exposed. It could mean that she's a nude model and she's on the set of the shoot, that she's a prostitute resting from a long day at work (and Lautrec, indeed, became acquainted with one of his famous prostitutes around this time, a woman in Montmartre called Marie-Charlotte (Milner, 1992)) or it could be her way of relaxing. The row of green small round tables and chairs further indicate that she may be a prostitute and that this may be a brothel since the setting seems less of a home and
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