The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (482 page)

 
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(active 1290s).
Italian mosaicist and painter. Nothing is known of his life, but he signed two mosaics commissioned by Pope Nicholas IV for the apses of S. Giovanni in Laterano (1291), and Sta Maria Maggiore (1295?), Rome, and must have been one of the leading contemporaries of
Cavallini
. The mosaic in S. Giovanni in Laterano appears to have been a reworking of an earlier design and was reconstructed in the 19th cent., so Torriti's style can best be assessed from the less restored mosaic in Sta Maria Maggiore. Here, in the main scene of the
Coronation of the Virgin
and subsidiary scenes from the life of the Virgin, Torriti recaptures something of the vitality of late
antique
mosaics; he was clearly influenced in his choice of colour by the pale delicate harmonies and silvery lights of the 5th-cent. mosaic on the triumphal arch of the same church. A small series of frescos in the Upper Church of S. Francesco, Assisi, has been attributed to Torriti on stylistic grounds.

 
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(1864–1901)
. French painter and graphic artist, one of the most colourful of 19th-cent. artists. The son of an outrageously eccentric nobleman, he grew up with a love of sport, but as a result of two falls when he was in his early teens the bones in his legs atrophied and he became permanently stunted. (Accounts of his height vary, but he was certainly not the midget of the popular imagination. He was about 5 ft tall, but his large head made him appear grotesquely misproportioned. Lautrec was stoical about his condition, never mentioning it except in jest, and it did not prevent him from attracting women as beautiful as Suzanne
Valadon
.) He showed an early talent for drawing (his father and uncle were amateur artists) and in 1882 he became a pupil of
Bonnat
and in 1883 of
Cormon
. At the age of 21, in 1885, he was given an allowance and set up in a studio of his own at Montmartre. He also began to draw for illustrated journals. He met van
Gogh
at Cormon's school in 1886 and came into contact with
Impressionist
and
Post-Impressionist
painters. From the age of 15 until he was 24 he painted mainly sporting subjects. From
c.
1888 he began to illustrate the theatres, music-halls (particularly the Moulin Rouge), cafés, and low life of Paris; circuses and brothels were among the subjects he returned to again and again. He collected the etchings of
Goya
and his painting came much under the influence of
Degas
.
In 1888 he had come into contact with
Gauguin
and began a continuing enthusiasm for Japanese colour prints (see
UKIYO-E
). The influence of Gauguin's flat rhythmic patterning and calligraphic use of strong outline became dominant chiefly in Lautrec's
lithographs
, including his famous posters. In spite of his notoriously dissipated lifestyle, he was a dedicated craftsman, and would arrive early at the workshop—even after a hard night's drinking—to supervise the printing of his designs. His work, with its masterfully bold and arresting forms, was one of the most important influences in gaining acceptance for both lithography and the poster as major art forms. Lautrec's alcoholism and dissolute life (he had syphilis) led to a breakdown in 1899 and the paintings he produced in the brief period between his recovery and his premature death, aged 36, are more sombre in style than his earlier work. In 1922 the Lautrec family presented some 600 of his works to his native town of Albi, where the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec was created to house them. The museum houses not only works by Lautrec but also memorabilia, notably his walking stick, which ingeniously opens up to reveal a tiny glass and flask of brandy.

 
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(1590–1638/9).
French painter. Very little is known of his life and most of the attributions to him are speculative, but he seems to have been—with the exception of Georges de
La Tour
—the most individual and sensitive of French
Caravaggesque
painters. He was in Rome
c.
1619–26, then is recorded in Carcassonne in 1627 and in Toulouse from 1632. The works attributed to him in his Roman period are
genre
scenes of music making, dice-playing, etc. (
A Musical Party
, City Art Mus., St Louis), but after he returned to France he concentrated on religious pictures. There are examples in the Louvre and the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, including a remarkable
Battle of Constantine
influenced by
Piero della Francesca's
battle scenes at Arezzo—this at a time when Piero was virtually forgotten. More typical of Tournier's paintings in the museum at Toulouse are
The Lamentation
and
The Entombment
, which show the grace and refinement of his style.

 
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(1739/40–1816).
English watercolour painter, active in London and Exeter. He earned his living mainly as a drawing master and his work was little known to his contemporaries, but he is now regarded as being one of the most individual watercolourists of his period. His method of painting in flat
washes
over a brown pen-and-ink outline was employed with a severe economy of means and he had an eye for geometrical structure that gives his pictures an almost abstract feel and an affinity with such 20th-cent. work as that of John
Nash
. His best works are considered to be those done when he passed through Switzerland in 1781 when returning from a visit to Italy. He also visited Wales and the Lake District.

 
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