Toulouse-Lautrec receives a more positive reaction in 1883, when he joins the studio of Fernand Cormon, who is currently enjoying a moment of celebrity.

Cormon gives Toulouse-Lautrec much freedom in developing a personal style.

That Cormon approves of his pupil's work is proved by his choosing Toulouse-Lautrec to assist him in illustrating the definitive edition of the works of Victor Hugo. (In the end, however, Toulouse-Lautrec's drawings for this project will not be used.)

Despite this approval, Toulouse-Lautrec finds the atmosphere at Cormon's studio increasingly restrictive. “Cormon's corrections are much kinder than Bonnat's were,” he writes his uncle Charles on February 18, 1883. “He looks at everything you show him and encourages one steadily. It might surprise you, but I don't like that so much. You see, the lashing of my former master pepped me up, and I didn't spare myself.”

The academic regimen of copying becomes insufferable.

He makes “a great effort to copy the model exactly,” one of his friends later recalls, “but in spite of himself he exaggerated certain details, sometimes the general character, so that he distorted without trying or even wanting to.” Soon, Toulouse-Lautrec's attendance at the studio becomes infrequent at best.

He now rents his own studio in the Montmartre district of Paris and concerns himself, for the most part, with doing portraits of his friends.