Few artworks depict fin de siècle Paris more precisely and evocatively than the works of Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, better known as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, or, to his contemporaries, ‘The Dwarf of Montmartre’ or, more succinctly still, ‘Teapot’.
‘The fact that he was small in stature is kind of well known,’ says senior curator of the National Gallery of Australia Jane Kinsman. ‘His family had a tradition of intermarriage, so his mother and his father were cousins. It started off with some congenital problems and that has meant he had trouble with his bones, he couldn’t grow; and then he had two accidents and broke both his legs.’
