"In 1899 Henri, Vicomte de Toulouse Lautrec, was taken into a mental home. Two years later, worn out with dissipation and drink, he died at the age of 37, like his colleague Van Gogh." "The story behind these few tragic years of life is one of self-destruction and the achievement of genius." "Born into one of the most ancient noble families of France, Lautrec seemed destined to follow its traditional way of living, when two accidents following within a short time of each other arrested the growth of his legs, and dramatically changed his life." "The crippled, stunted boy of fifteen with a passion for sketching, grew into a grotesque dwarf who flung himself into a life of excess, burning himself out in the dance halls, brothels and cabarets of Montmartre and finally, as he himself admitted, 'committing moral suicide'." "Montmartre was not slow in taking to itself this aristocratic 'Little Monster' whose buffoonery, depravity and wit brought him the sort of eccentric popularity, without pity or mockery, which he knew he could not obtain elsewhere." "Out of it all there emerged the remarkable artist we know, who captured with penetrating clarity the excitement and depravity of an epoch which was finally to destroy him." "With the co-operation of the descendents of the Lautrec family and after several years of painstaking detective work, Henri Perruchot is able to throw an entirely new light on the strange and pitiful life of one of the great painters of the nineteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved