Der Schimmel „Gazelle“

In 1881 Toulouse-Lautrec was 16 and nowhere near the poster-maker of Montmartre he would become. He was painting at his family's estates in the south of France, where the aristocratic Lautrecs rode and hunted, and animals were among the first things he learned to draw. A few years earlier he had broken both thighbones in falls, and the legs never grew properly again, quietly closing off the riding life his family had assumed for him. So the horse comes to him on canvas instead. Gazelle is caught in quick, loose strokes, the pale coat lifted out of a dark ground, the animal leaning over a wooden rail. His teacher in these years was Rene Princeteau, a friend of the family who made his living painting horses and dogs.