Die Gräfin Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec

In 1882 Lautrec was 17 and had just been sent to Paris to be trained properly, first in the studio of Léon Bonnat, then with Fernand Cormon. His mother, the countess Adèle, had separated from his father years before and was the fixed point in his life through two broken thigh bones and the long convalescences that left him stunted. She sat for him more often than anyone, usually reading, usually not looking up, and the portraits of her from these years are quiet in a way nothing he later painted in Montmartre is. This one stayed in the family. After his death in 1901 Adèle and his friend Maurice Joyant offered the contents of his studio to museums in Paris, were turned down, and gave the lot instead to Albi, the town where he was born.