Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's first professional teacher in painting is René Princeteau, a friend of the Lautrec family.

Princeteau's fame, such as it is, stems from his depiction of military and equestrian subjects, done in a nineteenth-century academic style.

Though Toulouse-Lautrec gets on well with Princeteau, he moves on at the end of 1882 to the busy atelier of Léon Bonnat, whose portrait subjects have included Adolphe Thiers, Victor Hugo, Hippolyte Taine, Louis Pasteur, J.-A.-D. Ingres, and other contemporaries.

In all, Bonnat paints about two hundred portraits in this series, most of them featuring photographically accurate draftsmanship and subdued coloring.

In Bonnat, Toulouse-Lautrec encounters an artist who fights vehemently against deviation from academic rules, condemns the slapdash approach of the Impressionists, and judges Toulouse-Lautrec's drawing “atrocious.”