No Moulin Rouge, Paris, França (Au Moulin Rouge) - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

No Moulin Rouge, Paris, França (Au Moulin Rouge) - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Paris - França
The Art Institute of Chicago
OST - 123x141 - 1892-1895

At the Moulin Rouge (French: Au Moulin Rouge) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was painted between 1892 and 1895. It is one of a number of works by Toulouse-Lautrec depicting the Moulin Rouge cabaretbuilt in Paris in 1889; the others include At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance and the poster Moulin Rouge: La Goulue.

The painting portrays near its center a group of three men and two women sitting around a table situated on the floor of the cabaret. From right to left, the people at the table include: Édouard Dujardin, dancer La Macarona, photographer Paul Secau, and photographer Maurice Guibert. In the right foreground, apparently sitting at a different table is a partial profile, with her face lit in a distinctive light, is English dancer May Milton. In the background on the right is Moulin Rouge dancer La Goulue and a woman. The center-left background shows Toulouse-Lautrec himself, as well as Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran.

At the Moulin Rouge is owned by the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, where it was first displayed on December 23, 1930. It was exhibited in London in 2011 at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

In At the Moulin Rouge Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec memorialized Parisian nightlife at the end of the nineteenth century. The painting is noted for its daring composition, dramatic cropping, and flat planes of strident color. A regular patron of the Moulin Rouge, one of the most famous cabarets of the Montmartre district, Toulouse-Lautrec here turned his acute powers of observation on the club’s other habitués. 

The flaming red-orange hair of the entertainer Jane Avril is the focal point of the central seated group. 

Preening in the greenish mirror in the background is the dancer La Goulue. 

The stunted figure of the aristocratic artist appears, as it often did in life, next to his devoted, much taller cousin, Dr. Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran. 

But it is the frozen, acid-green face of the dancer May Milton that dominates the canvas and haunts the action. 

The painting comprises two joined parts: a small main canvas and an L-shaped panel to the lower and right edges. The canvas was severed after the artist’s death, perhaps by his dealer (to make the composition less radical and more saleable), and restored sometime before 1914.