Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa lenkt seine Mail-Coach in Nizza

Toulouse-Lautrec painted this around 1880, when he was only about 16, years before Montmartre and the dance-hall posters that made his name. The driver is his own father, Count Alphonse, a restless aristocrat who lived for horses and hunting. Here he handles a four-horse mail-coach along the seafront at Nice, where the family wintered for the boy's fragile health. Two bad falls in his teens had left Henri's legs stunted, and while his father rode and hunted, the son watched and drew. He signed the picture a souvenir of the Promenade des Anglais, the famous seafront walk. The brushwork is fast and unfinished, more a study of speed and animals than a careful portrait.