Ein Dog-Cart

Lautrec was 15 when he painted this. He had broken his left thigh bone in 1878 and the right one the following summer, the bones never set properly, and the years in which a boy of his family would have been out riding to hounds were spent sitting still instead. His father's friend René Princeteau, a painter of horses and hunting scenes who was deaf and spoke with difficulty, took him in hand and taught him to catch animals in movement. A dog-cart is a light two-wheeled carriage, named for the boxed compartment under the seat that was built to carry sporting dogs out to the field. He painted horses and harness over and over in these years. The museum in Albi, the town he was born in, holds the family's own hoard of them, given by his mother after his death in 1901.