November 24

French Post-Impressionist painter, printmaker and illustrator Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born on November 24, 1864, into an aristocratic family in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. As a boy he suffered from congenital health problems caused by inbreeding (his parents were first cousins). He was 5 ft. 1 in. tall, with child-sized legs. In Paris he immersed himself in art, developing a style influenced by the work of Manet and Degas and classical Japanese woodprints that had become popular in art circles. A large portion of his immense output recorded the dissolute, bohemian lifestyle of Paris’ Montmartre in the late-19th-century. Toulouse-Lautrec was not yet 37 when he died of alcoholism and syphilis. Pictured: Au Moulin Rouge (1892), in which an oblique angle and cut figure impart a sense of movement and immediacy.