I must agree with some of the other reviews that have appeared on this book. I got this book with the intention of learning something more about Toulouse Lautrec. I really like all aspects of his work and wanted to find something that would be more true to life than the the movie "Moulin Rouge." Usually in most biographies of artists there is a more than passing interest in the work. I did not find this aspect in this book. Instead the author focuses on rather facile Freudian looks at the paintings themselves. As Freud himself observed, "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar." Elements of composition are subjected to a desire to demonstrate some sort of unified field theory toward Toulouse Lautrec's art. I am still looking for a book that illuminate's Toulouse Lautrec's art and life for this clearly is not it.

Julia Frey may be a French scholar and had some art training, but her attempts a psychological interpretation of Toulouse-Lautrec, his art, and his extended family were superficial, awkward, and in the end presumptuous. This biography would have been an informative work without all the attempts at interpretation and pseudo-psychoanalysis, which end up just being annoying. Frey can't resist the titillation of including all possible graphic details including voyeuristic repeated references to whether Toulouse-Lautrec really was a sexual being - in spite of his physical disabilities. In the end she reveals more about her own fixations than his, and treats us to a tiring display of her own ignorance regarding what was actually a pretty standard slide into chronic alcoholism by a talented artist.

I was excited with the prospect of reading a well written, well researched biography of one of the great artists. Well I was put off from the first. Referring to Henri's body as tiny, painfully deformed. I thought "Oh boy!" "Here we go again". It made me wonder how many people with disabilities she had ever met and that way of thinking that poor Henri could never find true love because of his size. Hmmm? What about Danny De Vito, Paul Williams, even throw in Truman Capote. All of these men are(were) small of height and ther lives were NOT dictated by the fact of not being six feet tall. Other than that their were no fresh insights, maybe just a tidbit here and there. Also did we really need those wonderful photos of Henri defecating on the beach?