Toulouse-Lautrec is my favorite artist. He has always fascinated me the most, both his life and his work. He had one or two accidents as a child where his legs were broken and they stopped growing. As a result, he became a dwarf. This must have created a deep-seated inferiority complex in him that caused him, consciously or unconsciously, to draw unflattering caricatures of his contemporaries. But the drawing style was completely original and his own. He soon became famous for his lithographs or posters depicting entertainers at the Moulin Rouge, etc. He was highly productive but always a heavy drinker and inexhaustible party animal. In fact, it was his frequenting of brothels and romantic friendships with prostitutes that eventually did him in. He caught syphilis, a deadly 19th century venereal disease for which there was no cure in those days. However, he left behind some of the most unique Impressionist paintings of Parisian night-life ever painted.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"