La Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec - breakfast at the Château de Malromé

In 1883 the artist's mother, Countess Adèle, bought the Château de Malromé in the wine country near Bordeaux, and her teenage son painted her there at the breakfast table. Henri was about 18, still training, and years from the Montmartre cabarets and brothels that would make his name. His parents were cousins who had separated, and it was Adèle who raised him and nursed him through the illness that left his legs stunted. He painted her often. Here she sits alone with the morning light, absorbed, not posing, the kind of unguarded look he would later chase in dancers and laundresses. The house stayed in the family, and it was there that he died in 1901, at 36, with Adèle beside him.