![](https://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/images/collection/drawings/299001v_0001.jpg)
Toulouse-Lautrec took up drawing early. A Latin-French grammar book with over 350 marginal sketches was recently on the art market, revealing his quick and clever ability with the pen even as a sixteen-year-old about to sit for his baccalaureate degree. This period, around 1880, marked the start of his formal training with his uncle, Charles de Toulouse-Lautrec, and then the artist René Princeteau, a friend of his father's and a horse enthusiast. The world of horses, hunting, and country sports is also evident in the eleven pages from a sketchbook used by the young artist in the 1880s. Rabbits, deer, dogs, horses, and hunters feature prominently, along with a few carriages, and a sheet with a slight sketch of a circus monkey hints at his abiding interest in the world of performance. A study of a riding academy and a few more extensive sketches with urban settings suggest the artist used the sketchbook when he ventured to Paris in 1882 to study with Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon.
On the recto of this sketchbook page, four horses, the front two rearing, draw a carriage carrying four figures. On the verso is a grouping of curvilinear lines perhaps outlining the back of a woman.
Numbered at lower left, recto and verso, "11"; inscribed on recto, at lower right, “H Bain (?)” and at lower left, “T-L.” Stamped on verso “FK” (Koenigs' mark, L. 1023a)
Watermark: none
Koenigs, Franz, former owner.
Waals-Koenigs, Christine van der, former owner.
Kramarsky, Lola, former owner.
Kramarsky, Siegfried, former owner.
Binkhorst, Sonja Kramarsky, former owner.