Toulouse-Lautrec high school series on TF1: who was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec?
This is a new series that has been in full swing on TF1 since Monday January 9: Toulouse Lautrec high school. But who was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec whose surname is so famous and reminds us of our beautiful Pink City?
Toulouse-Lautrec high school, what is the series signed TF1 about?
It is a unique place in France. To begin with, not the filming of Toulouse Lautrec high school does not take place in Toulouse, but in the only school in France that mixes students with disabilities and able-bodied students, located in Vaucresson in the Hauts-de-Seine. A fiction-reality in which we find Stéphane de Groodt, Valérie Karsenti as well as Rayane Bensetti, and directed by Fanny Riedberger. The latter tells the true story behind her screenplay: “My parents had found this establishment for my brother who was going through great difficulties following a fall from the sixth floor which he had made at the age of two… That’s how I spent three years there too.”
The series broadcast on TF1 since Monday January 9, 2023 therefore tells the story of this former high school student confronted with the world of disability in this specialized high school, created in 1980 and called Toulouse-Lautrec. And 3,895,000 viewers were captivated by the first two episodes (out of six) whose name of the series refers, in particular, to the Pink City.
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Who was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the man who gave his name to the school?
Born November 24, 1864 in Albi, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a painter, draftsman, lithographer, poster artist, genius portrait painter, son of Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec and his first cousin, Adèle Tapié de Celeyran. A successful career as an artist despite a complicated childhood passed between Albi and family castles. In fact, from 1874, a disease of congenital origin was revealed, attributed to the consanguinity of his two (divorced) parents: the pycnodysostosis. A genetic disease weakening his bones and affecting his height (he does not exceed 1.52 m), but which does not prevent him from continuing his studies. In particularget your Baccalaureate in Toulousein 1881, before beginning his life as a painter in Paris.
Despite an invaluable talent, leading him to the greatest like Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec will end up alcoholicwill be interned in 1899 for attacks of hallucinations and paranoia, will have a cerebral vascular accident and an attack of apoplexy. The whole, the finished permanently crippled, wheelchair and hemiplegic. It was after all these accidents that the latter will release his last breath, alongside his mother at the Château de Malromé (Gironde), the
A posthumous museum in his name deployed in Occitania
After a life as an artist at heyday son of 1886 (when he discovered, adored and lived in Montmartre) to 1897 (his production darkens and slows down in view of his health concerns), he will experience a real reputation in painting, a few years after his death, thanks to his friend and art dealer, Maurice Joyant. The latter succeeded in convincing the general council of the Tarn to open a Toulouse-Lautrec museum in the heart of the Berbie Palace, the episcopal residence of the bishops of Albi. It was therefore in 1922 that the premises were translated and have since housed the most beautiful collection in the world of works by this artist. both controversial and adored, with some 1000 works of which 600 are presented to the public.
Note that the (too?) sulfurous reputation of the painter as well as his (too?) contemporary style for the time will have earned him a refusal from Paris and Toulouse for the opening of a museum in his name!
The Toulouse-Lautrec MuseumBerbie Palace, Pl. Sainte-Cécile, 81000 Albi
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A school, a museum and much more!
Today, decades after his existence, when we talk about Toulouse-Lautrec, we think we owe his paintings, but he left much more. Indeed, the multifaceted man also left a legacy of 737 paintings, 275 watercolours, 369 lithographs and more than 5,000 world-famous drawings… As well as streets in his name (in Paris as in Toulouse), schools (including the now famous Lycée Toulouse-Lautrec de Vaucresson) and therefore, a sublime museum!
The Toulouse-Lautrec high school honored in the TF1 series therefore bears this name in relation to the physical disability of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, disabled since he was ten years old and until his death.