Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was an aristocrat, the son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse and last in line of a family that dated back a thousand years.

Henri was weak and often sick. By the time he was 10 he had begun to draw and paint. At the age of 12, Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at the age of 14 his right leg. The bones failed to heal properly, and his legs stopped growing. He reached young adulthood with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 1.5 meters tall.

Toulouse-Lautrec lived wholly for his art. He stayed in the Montmartre section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he loved to paint. Circuses, dance halls and nightclubs, racetracks--all these spectacles were very much a part of Lautrec's activities. He would sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, and at the same time he would make swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into bright-colored paintings.

In order to become a part of the Montmartre life, Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink heavily. In the 1890s the drinking started to affect his health. He was confined to a sanatorium and to his mother's care at home, but he could not stay away from alcohol. Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1901.

Of the many painters living and working in Paris during the late 19th century, Toulouse-Lautrec observed and captured in his art the Parisian nightlife of the period, making him one of the greatest immortal painters of the 19th century.