Allegorical sketch - Dolphin

In 1883 the Lautrec of the Montmartre posters did not yet exist. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was about 18, a student training in Paris, and still turning out the academic exercises every young painter was set, including allegorical figures like this one built around a dolphin. It sits a long way from the dance halls and cabaret bills he would become famous for only about a decade later. A slight study like this survives mostly because of where his work ended up. Lautrec died in 1901, not yet 37, and his mother, the Countess Adèle, gathered up his studio and gave it to his home town of Albi, in southern France. The museum that opened there in 1922 still holds the largest collection of his work anywhere, early studies like this one included.