Sunday, July 3, 2011

You horrible little man…

The critic Jean Lorrain accused Toulouse-Lautrec of taking the cult of ugliness too far.  Cabaret performer Yvette Guilbert’s response to a drawing he had made of her was, “You horrible little man”.

With portraiture, it is difficult to resist flattering the sitter.  However, when the sitter is in an irritable frame of mind the artist can mischievously use it to his advantage.  

Here’s an unsmiling, uncombed Denise on a morning when everything went wrong.  As she huffed out of the studio, I could swear I heard her say, “You horrible little man”.



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