Titans of History

Following the war, Lloyd George—long a believer in female emancipation—extended voting rights to women. He went on to help bring an end to the war of independence in Ireland, which had broken out in January 1919. In 1921 he negotiated a treaty allowing twenty-six southern counties to form the Irish Free State. But six northern counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland, with violent consequences for another eighty years.

Despite these achievements, Lloyd George found himself in political difficulties. His reputation was marred by scandals surrounding the sale of peerages, and the Conservatives in his coalition government opposed his plans to increase public expenditure on housing and social services, forcing him to resign in October 1922. Although he became reconciled with the main bulk of the Liberal Party and returned as their leader in 1926, the Liberals were now a spent force, eclipsed by the rise of the Labour Party.

After 1922 Lloyd George’s vanity and folly undermined him. His visit to Hitler handed the Nazis a propaganda coup, though he later came to oppose appeasement and called for rearmament. He had resigned as leader of the Liberals in 1931 because of ill health, but continued to sit as an MP, declining Churchill’s offer of a cabinet position during the Second World War on the grounds of his age. Long married to Margaret Owen, he had many mistresses, above all his secretary Frances Stevenson, whom he married in 1943. In that year he also voted for the last time in Parliament, in support of the Beveridge Report, which outlined the cradle-to-grave extension of the welfare state that Lloyd George had done so much to create. It was a fitting farewell to politics. Early in 1945 he was raised to the peerage, but he died before he could take his seat in the House of Lords.

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

1864–1901

He did not overturn reality to discover truth, where there was nothing. He contented himself with looking. He did not see, as many do, what we seem to be, but what we are. Then, with a sureness of hand and a boldness at once sensitive and firm, he revealed us to ourselves.

From Toulouse-Lautrec’s obituary in the Journal de Paris

Vicomte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the iconic chronicler of Parisian nightlife, confronted society with a vibrant celebration of humanity in all its distortions. He is world-famous today principally for his posters, but while these are undeniably superb, they have obscured his brilliance as a painter and portraitist who brought poignant sensitivity to his studies of the women of the demi-monde. In truth he was the Rembrandt of the night.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s art illuminates Paris’s artistic quarter in all its glory, immortalizing the chorus girls and entertainers who crowded its streets, cabarets and cafés. It was a ground-breaking departure in art. His work caused outrage, but he did not do it to shock. Rather, he wanted to “depict the true and not the ideal.” In so doing, he humanized his subjects because they were people he knew so well, giving them a nobility that society had always denied them.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s style—clear, economical lines, bright colors and vigorous, often ironic representations—was as revelatory as his subjects. After he decided to become an artist, his wealthy aristocratic family arranged for him to be tutored by a family friend and society painter. Toulouse-Lautrec developed his distinctive style almost in spite of his training. Notwithstanding his eagerness to please, he found himself unable to copy a model exactly. “In spite of himself,” a friend recalled, “he exaggerated certain details, sometimes the general character, so that he distorted without trying or even wanting to.” A subsequent tutor found this freedom of expression “atrocious.” At age nineteen, he was given an allowance to set up his own studio, whereupon he moved to Montmartre and began to paint his friends.