Claudia Massie

Poster boy

100 years later we’re still sticking his posters on our walls. It’s quite something to see them all in one show at the National Galleries of Scotland

issue 20 October 2018

You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic first cousins, in a family never shy of consanguinity, he was blighted by congenital deformities and weaknesses. When his brittle legs broke in his teenage years, they stopped growing altogether, leaving the adult Lautrec tiny as well as weird-looking, with his heavy lips and thick-lidded eyes.

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