Céleyran, along the river

Céleyran was the family's estate near Narbonne, on his mother's side, wine country running down to the water. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this view of it in 1880, when he was 15. Two falls in the previous two years had broken both his thigh bones, and the legs never properly healed or grew, so the country sports his aristocratic family lived for were closed to him. He drew and painted instead, out on the estate, years before Paris, the dance halls and the posters that made his name. This early canvas stays close to home: the riverbank, the light on the water, the trees of a place he had known since he was small.