At the Moulin Rouge

At the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Café-concerts were popular venues for drinking and entertainment in late nineteenth-century Paris and attract…

What to notice

Scan the tilted room from the cropped foreground figure to the acid-green face at right; abrupt cuts and artificial light turn nightlife into something unstable.

Discover

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 R…