Paul Viaud Dressed as an Admiral of the 18th Century

By 1901 Toulouse-Lautrec was 36 and worn down by drink. After a breakdown two years earlier, his family had sent a distant cousin, Paul Viaud, to live with him and keep him off the bottle. The two spent that last summer on the Atlantic coast near Arcachon, and it was there that Lautrec set Viaud up in the red coat and white wig of an 18th-century naval officer, the pose and costume taken from an old print. The picture was meant to serve as a decorative panel, and he never finished it. He worked the head and the coat and left the rest of the canvas bare. Lautrec died that September, with Viaud among the people at his bedside, and this half-painted admiral is one of the last things he touched.