1.
Montmartre
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Montmartre is a large hill in Pariss 18th arrondissement. It is 130 m high and gives its name to the surrounding district, Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district. The other, older, church on the hill is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, Montmartre is also the setting for several hit films. This site is served by metro, with line 2 stations at Anvers, Pigalle, and Blanche and line 12 stations at Pigalle, Abbesses, Lamarck - Caulaincourt, texts from the 8th century cite the name of mons Mercori, and a 9th-century text speaks of Mount Mars. Excavations in 1975 north of the Church of Saint-Pierre found coins from the 3rd century, earlier excavations in the 17th century at the Fontaine-du-But found vestiges of Roman baths from the 2nd century. According to Hilduin, Denis collected his head and carried it as far as the fontaine Saint-Denis, then descended the slope of the hill. Hilduin wrote that a church had built in the place formerly called Mont de Mars. In 1134, king Louis VI purchased the Merovingian chapel and built on the site the church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre and he also founded The Royal Abbey of Montmartre, a monastery of the Benedictine order, whose buildings, gardens and fields occupied most of Montmartre. He also built a chapel, called the Martyrium, at the site where it was believed that Saint Denis had been decapitated. It became a pilgrimage site. In the 17th century, a priory called abbaye den bas was built at that site, the abbey was destroyed in 1790 during the French Revolution, and the convent demolished to make place for gypsum mines. The church of Saint-Pierre was saved, at the place where the chapel of the Martyrs was located, an oratory was built in 1855. By the 15th century, the north and northeast slopes of the hill were the site of a surrounded by vineyards, gardens and orchards of peach. The first mills were built on the slope in 1529, grinding wheat, barley. The siege eventually failed when a relief force approached and forced Henry to withdraw. In 1790, Montmartre was located just outside the limits of Paris and that year, under the revolutionary government of the National Constituent Assembly, it became the commune of Montmartre, with its town hall located on place du Tertre, site of the former abbey. The main businesses of the commune were wine making, stone quarries, the mining of gypsum had begun in the Gallo-Roman period, first in open air mines and then underground, and continued until 1860. The gypsum was cut into blocks, baked, then ground, sold as montmartarite, it was used for plaster, because of its resistance to fire and water
2.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
3.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
4.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Cityscape
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In the visual arts a cityscape is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. It is the equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size, in urban design the terms refer to the configuration of built forms and interstitial space. From the first century A. D. dates a fresco at the Baths of Trajan in Rome depicting a birds eye view of an ancient city, in the Middle Ages, cityscapes appeared as a background for portraits and biblical themes. From the 16th up to the 18th century numerous copperplate prints, the function of these prints was to provide a map-like overview. Halfway the 17th century the cityscape became an independent genre in the Netherlands, in his famous View of Delft in 1660-1661 Jan Vermeer painted a quite accurate portrait of the city Delft. Cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague also became subjects for paintings. Painters from other European countries followed the Dutch example, the 18th century was a flourishing period for cityscape painting in Venice. At the end of the 19th century the impressionists focused on the atmosphere, suburban and industrial areas, building sites and railway yards also became subjects for cityscapes. During the 20th century attention became focused on abstract and conceptual art, American painter Edward Hopper, who stayed loyal to figurative painting, created intriguing images of the American scene. With a revival of art at the end of the 20th century comes a revaluation of the cityscape. Well-known living cityscape painters are Rackstraw Downes, Antonio López García, American artist Yvonne Jacquette has made a specialty of aerial cityscapes. Stephen Wiltshire, a London born artist with autism, is known for his panoramic cityscape renderings composed from memory, gordon Cullen Landscape painting List of cities with most skyscrapers Skyline Veduta Media related to Cityscape paintings at Wikimedia Commons
6.
Suzanne Valadon
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Suzanne Valadon was a French painter and artists model who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo, the subjects of her drawings and paintings included mostly female nudes, female portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition, Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist. Valadon grew up in poverty with her mother and did not know her father and she was known to be quite independent and rebellious. She attended primary school until age 11 when she began to work, in 1883 Valadon gave birth to her illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, at the age of 18. Valadon’s mother cared for Maurice while she returned to modeling, Valadons friend Miguel Utrillo would later sign papers recognizing Maurice as his son, although his true paternity is uncertain. Valadon helped to educate herself in art by reading Toulouse-Lautrec’s books, in 1893, Valadon began a short-lived affair with composer Erik Satie, moving to a room next to his on the Rue Cortot. Valadon married stockbroker Paul Moussis in 1895, leading a life for 13 years at an apartment in Paris. In 1909, Valadon began an affair with the painter André Utter, age 23, Valadon married Utter in 1914, and he managed her career as well as her sons. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934, at the age of 15 Valadon met, Count Antoine de la Rochefoucauld and Thèo Wagner, two symbolist painters who were involved in decorating circus belonging to Medrano. Through this connection she began work at the Mollier circus as a acrobat, but a year later, the circus was frequented by artists such as Lautrec, Sescau and Berthe Morisot and it is believed this is where Morisot did her painting of Valadon. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, Valadon debuted as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modelled for over 10 years for different artists including the following, Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. She modelled under the name “Maria” eventually being nicknamed “Suzanne” after the story of Susanna. She was considered a very focused, ambitious, rebellious, determined, self-confident and she was also known to be good friends with Edgar Degas. In the early 1890s she befriended Degas who, impressed with her bold line drawings and fine paintings, purchased her work and she remained one of Degass closest friends until his death. The most recognizable image of Valadon would be in Renoirs Dance at Bougival from 1883, in 1885, Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair
7.
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter best known for his mural painting, who came to be known as the painter for France. He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Puvis de Chavannes was a prominent painter in the early Third Republic. Émile Zola described his work as an art made of reason, passion, Puvis de Chavannes was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis in a suburb of Lyon, France. He was the son of a mining engineer, being descended from an old noble family of Burgundy, he later added the ancestral de Chavannes to his name. Throughout his life, however, he spurned his Lyon origins, preferring to identify himself with the blood of the Burgundians. Puvis de Chavannes was educated at the Amiens College and at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and he intended to follow his fathers profession until a serious illness compelled him to convalesce at Mâcon with his brother and sister-in-law in 1844 and 1845, interrupting his studies. A journey to Italy opened his mind to fresh ideas, and he studied first under Eugène Delacroix, but only very briefly, as Delacroix closed his studio shortly afterwards due to ill health. He studied subsequently under Henri Scheffer and then Thomas Couture and his training was not classical as he found that he preferred to work alone. He took a studio near the Gare de Lyon and attended anatomy classes at the Académie des Beaux Arts. It was not until a number of later, when the government of France acquired one of his works. Puvis de Chavannes made his Salon debut in 1850 with Dead Christ, Negro Boy, The Reading Lesson, and Portrait of a Man. In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher. One of his protégés was Georges de Feure, Puvis de Chavannes is best known for his mural painting, and came to be known as the painter for France. His first commission was for his brothers chateau, Le Brouchy, the principal decorations take the four seasons as their theme. His first public commissions came early in the 1860s, with work at the Musée de Picardie at Amiens, the first four works were Concordia, Bellum, Le Travail and Le Repos. Over the course of his career, Puvis received a number of commissions for works to be carried out in public. His early work at the Musée de Picardie had helped him to develop his style. Among his public works are the later cycles completed at Amiens, at Marseille, at Lyon, of particular importance is the cycle at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Lyon, which includes three significant works, filling the wall space in the main staircase
8.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir, was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has said that Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau. He was the father of actor Pierre Renoir, filmmaker Jean Renoir and he was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir, son of Pierre. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, in 1841 and his father, Léonard Renoir, was a tailor of modest means, so in 1844, Renoirs family moved to Paris in search of more favorable prospects. The location of their home, in rue d’Argenteuil in central Paris, although the young Renoir had a natural proclivity for drawing, he exhibited a greater talent for singing. His talent was encouraged by his teacher, Charles Gounod, who was the choir-master at the Church of St Roch at the time. However, due to the financial circumstances, Renoir had to discontinue his music lessons. Although Renoir displayed a talent for his work, he tired of the subject matter. The owner of the factory recognized his apprentice’s talent and communicated this to Renoir’s family, following this, Renoir started taking lessons to prepare for entry into Ecole des Beaux Arts. When the porcelain factory adopted mechanical reproduction processes in 1858, Renoir was forced to other means to support his learning. Before he enrolled in art school, he also painted hangings for overseas missionaries, in 1862, he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet, at times, during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Renoir had his first success at the Salon of 1868 with his painting Lise with a Parasol, although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, recognition was slow in coming, partly as a result of the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War. This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a change of subjects. Renoir was inspired by the style and subject matter of modern painters Camille Pissarro. Although the critical response to the exhibition was largely unfavorable, Renoirs work was well received. That same year, two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London, hoping to secure a livelihood by attracting portrait commissions, Renoir displayed mostly portraits at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. He contributed a diverse range of paintings the next year when the group presented its third exhibition, they included Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette
9.
Circus
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The term circus also describes the performance which has followed various formats through its 250-year modern history. Philip Astley is credited with being the father of the circus when he opened the first circus in 1768 in England. Early circuses were almost exclusively demonstrations of equestrian skills with a few types of acts to link the horsemanship performances. Performances developed significantly through the next fifty years, with large scale theatrical battle reenactments becoming a significant feature, as styles of performance have changed since the time of Astley, so too have the types of venues where these circuses have performed. The earliest modern circuses were performed in open air structures with limited covered seating, from the late 18th to late 19th century custom-made circus buildings were built with various types of seating, a centre ring, and sometimes a stage. The traditional large tents, commonly known as Big Tops were introduced in the mid 19th century as touring circuses superseded static venues and these tents eventually became the most common venue and remain so to the present day. Contemporary circuses perform in a variety of venues including tents, theatres, many circus performances are still held in a ring usually 13 m in diameter. This dimension was adopted by Philip Astley in the late 18th century as the minimum diameter that enabled a horse rider to stand upright on a cantering horse to perform their tricks. In the book De Spectaculis early Christian writer Tertullian claimed that the first circus games were staged by the goddess Circe in honour of her father Helios, the modern and commonly held idea of a circus is of a Big Top with various acts providing entertainment therein. For many, circus history begins with Englishman Philip Astley, while for others its origins go back much further—to Roman times. In Ancient Rome, the circus was a building for the exhibition of horse and chariot races, equestrian shows, staged battles, gladiatorial combat, the Roman circus buildings were, however, not circular but rectangular with semi circular ends. The lower seats were reserved for persons of rank, There were also various state boxes for the giver of the games, the circus was the only public spectacle at which men and women were not separated. It was constructed during the monarchy and, at first, built completely from wood, after being rebuilt several times, the final version of the Circus Maximus could seat 250,000 people, it was built of stone and measured 400m in length and 90m in width. Next in importance were the Circus Flaminius and the Circus Neronis, a fourth circus was constructed by Maxentius, its ruins have helped archaeologists reconstruct the Roman circus. For some time after the fall of Rome, large buildings fell out of use as centres of mass entertainment. Instead, itinerant performers, animal trainers and showmen travelled between towns throughout Europe, performing at local fairs, Astley performed stunts in a 42 ft diameter ring, which is the standard size used by circuses ever since. Astley referred to the arena as a Circle and the building as an amphitheatre. Joseph Grimaldi, the first mainstream clown, had his first major role as Little Clown in the pantomime The Triumph of Mirth, or, the Royal Circus opened in London on 4 November 1782 by Charles Dibdin and his partner Charles Hughes
10.
Acrobatics
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Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the arts, sports events. Although acrobatics is most commonly associated with human performance, it may also apply to other types of performance. Acrobatic traditions are found in cultures, and there is evidence that the earliest such traditions occurred thousands of years ago. For example, Minoan art from c.2000 BC contains depictions of acrobatic feats on the backs of bulls, ancient Greeks and Romans practiced acrobatics, and the noble court displays of the European Middle Ages would often include acrobatic performances that included juggling. In China, acrobatics have been a part of the culture since the Western Han Dynasty, acrobatics were part of village harvest festivals. Acrobatics continues to be an important part of modern Chinese variety art, though the term initially applied to tightrope walking, in the 19th century, a form of performance art including circus acts began to use the term as well. In the late 19th century, tumbling and other acrobatic and gymnastic activities became competitive sport in Europe, acrobatics has often served as a subject for fine art. An aerialist is an acrobat who performs in the air, on a suspended apparatus such as a trapeze, rope, cloud swing, aerial cradle, aerial pole, aerial silk, acrobatic gymnastics Contortion List of acrobatic activities
11.
Berthe Morisot
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Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of les trois grandes dames of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond, in 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris and it was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar. She was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend, Morisot was born in Bourges, France, into an affluent bourgeois family. Her father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot, was the prefect of the department of Cher and he also studied architecture at École des Beaux Arts. Her mother, Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie Thomas, was the great-niece of Jean-Honoré Fragonard and she had two older sisters, Yves and Edma, plus a younger brother, Tiburce, born in 1848. The family moved to Paris in 1852, when Morisot was a child and it was common practice for daughters of bourgeois families to receive art education, so Berthe and her sisters Yves and Edma were taught privately by Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne and Joseph Guichard. Morisot and her sisters initially started taking lessons so that they could make a drawing for their father for his birthday. In 1857 Guichard, who ran a school for girls in Rue des Moulins, introduced Berthe and Edma to the Louvre gallery where they could learn by looking and he also introduced them to the works of Gavarni. Guichard later became the director of École des Beaux Arts where Morisots father earned his degree, as art students, Berthe and Edma worked closely together until Edma married Adolphe Pontillon, a naval officer, moved to Cherbourg, had children, and had less time to paint. Letters between the show a loving relationship, underscored by Berthes regret at the distance between them and Edmas withdrawal from painting. Edma wholeheartedly supported Berthes continued work and their families always remained close, Edma wrote “… I am often with you in thought, dear Berthe. I’m in your studio and I like to slip away, if only for a quarter of an hour and her sister Yves married Theodore Gobillard, a tax inspector, in 1866, and was painted by Edgar Degas as Mrs Theodore Gobillard. In 1860, under Corots influence she took up the plein air method of working, by 1863 she was studying under Achille Oudinot, another Barbizon painter. In the winter of 1863–64 she studied sculpture under Aimé Millet, Morisots first appearance in the Salon de Paris came at the age of twenty-three in 1864, with the acceptance of two landscape paintings. She continued to show regularly in the Salon, to favorable reviews, until 1873. She exhibited with the Impressionists from 1874 onwards, only missing the exhibition in 1878 when her daughter was born, Morisots mature career began in 1872. She found an audience for her work with Durand-Ruel, the private dealer, in 1877, she was described by the critic for Le Temps as the one real Impressionist in this group
12.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
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Toulouse-Lautrec is among the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period, with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. In a 2005 auction at Christies auction house, La Blanchisseuse, his painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million. The last part of his name means he was a member of an aristocratic family and his younger brother was born in 1867, but died the following year. After the death of his brother, Henris parents separated and a nanny ended up taking care of him, at the age of eight, Henri went to live with his mother in Paris where he drew sketches and caricatures in his exercise workbooks. The family quickly realised that Henris talents lay in drawing and painting, a friend of his father, René Princeteau, visited sometimes to give informal lessons. Some of Henris early paintings are of horses, a speciality of Princeteau, in 1875, Toulouse-Lautrec returned to Albi because his mother had concerns about his health. He took thermal baths at Amélie-les-Bains and his mother consulted doctors in the hope of finding a way to improve her sons growth, Toulouse-Lautrecs parents, the Comte and Comtesse, were first cousins, and he suffered from congenital health conditions sometimes attributed to a family history of inbreeding. At age 13, Toulouse-Lautrec fractured his right femur, at age 14, he fractured his left. The breaks did not heal properly, modern physicians attribute this to an unknown genetic disorder, possibly pycnodysostosis, or a variant disorder along the lines of osteopetrosis, achondroplasia, or osteogenesis imperfecta. Rickets aggravated by praecox virilism has also been suggested, afterwards, his legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was extremely short. He developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, additionally, he is reported to have had hypertrophied genitals. Physically unable to participate in many activities enjoyed by males his age and he became an important Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, and, through his works, recorded many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec contributed a number of illustrations to the magazine Le Rire during the mid-1890s, after initially failing college entrance exams, he passed his second attempt and completed his studies. Toulouse-Lautrecs mother had high ambitions and, with the aim of her son becoming a fashionable and respected painter and he was drawn to Montmartre, the area of Paris famous for its bohemian lifestyle and the haunt of artists, writers, and philosophers. Studying with Bonnat placed Toulouse-Lautrec in the heart of Montmartre, an area he rarely left over the next 20 years. After Bonnat took a new job, Toulouse-Lautrec moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon in 1882 and studied for a five years. At this time he met Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh, Cormon, whose instruction was more relaxed than Bonnats, allowed his pupils to roam Paris, looking for subjects to paint. During this period, Toulouse-Lautrec had his first encounter with a prostitute, which led him to paint his first painting of a prostitute in Montmartre, a woman rumoured to be Marie-Charlet
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