Exame na Faculdade de Medicina, Paris, França (Examination at Faculty of Medicine) - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

 

Exame na Faculdade de Medicina, Paris, França (Examination at Faculty of Medicine) - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Paris - França
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi, França
OST - 65x81 - 1901


This painting is Lautrec's last work. It was executed between the beginning of May and the end of July 1901, only a few months before his death. It shows his cousin Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran taking his viva voce for his degree in medicine, although Tapié had in fact already qualified in 1899.
The candidate is sitting on the far left, red-faced in front of his professors, like a delinquent before a tribunal. The dark, barely illuminated scene seems out of keeping with Lautrec, and is more reminiscent of Dutch portraits in the seventeenth-century Baroque style.