Toulouse Lautrec

Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould head to France to take on a testing challenge - can they reverse an art world decision which one owner refuses to accept? Two sketchbooks found in a garden shed in St Emilion were given to a teenage boy, Alain, by his grandmother back in 1965. Although she never revealed where they came from, they were thought to be the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the aristocratic artist born in 1864 known for his atmospheric depictions of Parisian nightlife. Alain waited 50 years before he decided to present the sketches to the French committee responsible for authenticating the work of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Lautrec studied with two of the most admired academic painters of the day, Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon. Lautrec's time in the studios of Bonnat and Cormon had the advantage of introducing him to the nude as a subject. At that time life-drawing of the nude was the basis of all academic art training in nineteenth-century Paris. While still a student, Lautrec began to explore Parisian nightlife, which was to provide him with his greatest inspiration, and eventually undermined his health. Lautrec was an artist able to stamp his vision of the age in which he lived upon the imagination of future generations.

Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec se gana la reputación de pintor del vicio y los bajos fondos en el marginal barrio de Montmartre a fines del siglo XIX, donde los burgueses iban a encanallarse en compañía de hampones y chicas de mala vida. Pero, a principios del año 1895, un sórdido asunto sacude el ambiente de la noche de Montmartre: unas jóvenes de buena familia desaparecieron sin dejar testigos. Las sospechas se concentran en el entorno de Toulouse-Lautrec. ¿Y si sus pinturas contaran más de lo que parece?