Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec als Falkner

The falconer here is the painter's own father, Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec, an aristocrat from an ancient southern family who cared about little except hunting, horses and hawks. Henri painted him in 1882, at 17, still living the life of a country nobleman's son before Paris and Montmartre pulled him another way. The count had wanted an heir who would ride to hounds. Instead illness had left Henri small and fragile, his legs broken and stunted in his teens. Showing the old man in profile with a bird on his fist puts the count exactly where his attention really lived, out with his falcons. The portrait hangs today in Albi, the town the family came from, in a museum given over to the son.