At the Moulin Rouge

At the Moulin Rouge (1892/5) Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec

This painting is called 'At the Moulin Rouge' by the French painter Toulouse-Lautrec. As we probably know The Moulin Rouge is a nightclub in Paris. Maybe some of you remember the film 'Moulin Rouge'? In the 19th century, the nightclub was very famous for its beautiful dancers and singers.

Toulouse-Lautrec did a lot of paintings and posters of The Moulin Rouge
. He especially loved painting the dancers. And in these paintings he sometimes includes his friends too.

In the middle of the picture there are 5 people who are sitting at a table having a drink. The woman who is wearing a hat is a dancer, her name is la Macarona, and the man sitting next to her on the left is a friend of Toulouse-Lautrec. He was a photographer. On the right, there's a woman with fair hair, blue eyes, and very red lips. Her face looks very white. That's another famous dancer called Jane Avril. At the back of the picture, on the right, there are 2 women who are standing together. One of them is touching her hair. That's La Goulue and she was one of the most famous singers at the Moulin Rouge at that time.

Now this is very interesting. If you look carefully to the left of the 2 women, there are 2 men walking out of the nightclub. One of them is very tall and the other one is very short. The very tall man is Toulouse-Lautrec's cousin Gabriel, and the other man is Toulouse-Lautrec himself. Toulouse-Lautrec was only 1 metre 50 centimetres tall. He had very short legs and couldn't walk very well.

Some people think that this is why he loved painting the dancers of the Moulin Rouge.. because they all had beautiful, long legs.