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At the Moulin Rouge

Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
Date: 1892–95
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 123 × 141 cm (48 7/16 × 55 1/2 in.); Framed: 136.9 × 154.7 × 8.5 cm (53 7/8 × 60 7/8 × 3 5/16 in.)
Made in: France
Style: Post-Impressionism
Where to see it: Art Institute of Chicago

Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection · CC0 Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago · image via Wikimedia Commons · see it at the museum ↗

Notes from the museum

Café-concerts were popular venues for drinking and entertainment in late nineteenth-century Paris and attracted the interest of artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889, was the most famous of the café-concerts, and Toulouse-Lautrec was a habitué of the establishment—he even had a permanently reserved table. His painting Equestrienne (1887–88), now also in the Art Institute’s collection, was acquired by the owner of the nightclub as decoration for the lobby. At the Moulin Rouge is a cleverly observed group portrait of the (in some cases) infamous customers and entertainers who formed part of the artist’s circle. Standing in the background, the dancer La Goulue arranges her hair. Seated at the table are dancers La Macarona and Jane Avril, as well as photographer Paul Sescau, poet Édouard Dujardin, and vintner Maurice Guibert. Singer May Milton peers out from the right edge of the painting, her face harshly lit and a shocking acid green—the Moulin Rouge was designed to have electric lighting and Toulouse-Lautrec reveled in the artistic possibilities of artificial glare. The artist himself appears in the center background of the painting, a diminutive figure accompanied by his much taller cousin, the physician Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.

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About Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa, known as Toulouse-Lautrec, was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator. His immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris's Belle Époque in the late 19th century allowed him to produce popular works of art from decadent affairs.

Painter profile →