At the Moulin Rouge

Friends gather around a table on the floor of the Moulin Rouge, a dancer fixes her hair in a mirror, and a face glows green in the corner. Somewhere in the back, small and in profile, stands Toulouse-Lautrec himself.

The story behind the painting

Toulouse-Lautrec was closely bound to the nightlife of Paris. He went often to venues such as the Moulin Rouge, the cabaret built in 1889, and made friends among its performers. At the Moulin Rouge is one of several works he devoted to the place. The museum record dates it to 1892, while Wikipedia says it was painted between 1892 and 1895. It is a large oil on canvas, about 123 by 141 cm, and it carries the atmosphere of Belle Epoque Paris.

What to look for

Near the centre five people sit around a table. From left to right they are the writer Edouard Dujardin, the dancer La Macarona, the photographer Paul Secau, the photographer Maurice Guibert and, facing away, Jane Avril, known by her flaming red-orange hair. In the right foreground, apparently at another table, the English dancer May Milton is cut by the frame, her red lips and her face lit by a strange greenish light. At the back right, La Goulue fixes her hair beside another woman.

Meaning and intent

Look to the centre-left background and you find the painter himself, seen in profile, standing in front of Dr Gabriel Tapie de Celeyran. Placing himself there, small and among the crowd, makes the picture feel like a page from his own life rather than a view from outside. Everyone in it is a real person he knew, from writers and photographers to the star dancers of the house, so the painting becomes a group portrait of a whole night world.

Legacy

At the Moulin Rouge belongs to the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was first shown on 23 December 1930. In 2011 it travelled to London for an exhibition at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The critic Jonathan Jones calls it a masterpiece and writes that the scene is somehow more exotic and more exciting than any recreation of that world in popular culture. More than a century later, it still sets the image of the Moulin Rouge.