When the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889, it became the hottest nightspot in the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, just north of central Paris. Inside the cabaret, a corner table was permanently reserved for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Most nights he could be found there, sketching.
He even appears in the background of the iconic painting At the Moulin Rouge, walking alongside his much taller cousin, a medical student.
“To think,” the artist said with his signature self-deprecating wit, “that I would never have painted if my legs had been just a little longer.”
Henri-Marie-Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born into a noble family with roots stretching back to Charlemagne. A close look at his family tree reveals a number of intermarriages, a practice we now know increases the risk of genetic disorders.
The artist’s parents were reportedly first cousins. And although his upper body developed normally, his brittle legs remained short and childlike. Perhaps because of this, he rarely depicted himself in his work. And when he did, it was with irony.
A gift for empathy
Being an aristocrat who stands well under five feet tall informs Lautrec’s perspective. Many of his paintings convey a deep empathy for people who felt like outsiders during La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Era) in Paris.
In one of his earliest works, The Laundress, a young woman pauses from her work to gaze out a window. The indistinct rooftops visible through the glass suggest she’s dreaming of a life beyond this low-rent garret.
Her bony hand, roughened by hard work, contrasts with her lithe body. The clear distinction between her stiff arm and the undulating shape of her back conveys weariness and a diminishing spirit.
Many artists go for novelty and see their value and justification in novelty. But they are wrong. Novelty is hardly ever important. What matters is always just the one thing: to penetrate to the very heart of a thing and create it better.
Post-Impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Like the Impressionists, Lautrec rejected the French Academy’s focus on history and religious themes in favor of impromptu, everyday moments. Yet, his brushwork remained markedly different from that of Monet, Renoir, and Morisot.
Drawing in paint
In 1888, Lautrec began exploring new ways of applying paint. His colors became bolder and his oil paint became thinner. Moreover, he began using long, sweeping strokes to outline forms and short strokes to add texture to large areas of flat color—a technique influenced by Japanese woodblock prints.
In contrast to the Impressionists, Lautrec was not concerned with recreating optical sensations. His aim was to catch life on the wing. He wanted to preserve a stylistic continuity between his rapid sketches and the paintings into which they developed.
Art historian Douglas Cooper, “Toulouse-Lautrec,” 2005
To create Moulin de la Galette, Lautrec diluted paint with turpentine, applying it in translucent washes. This allowed unprimed canvas to peek through in spots, giving the crowded dance hall a spacious atmosphere.
He holds the composition together with a deft mix of crowded and empty spaces, horizontal and vertical lines, and the tension generated by opposing profiles: the woman on the left and the man wearing a bowler hat. (Sheesh, why doesn’t he ask her to dance already?)
Famously set in a historic windmill, the Moulin de la Galette was Lautrec’s first cabaret scene. While dancing was the main draw, the artist often turned his gaze toward the audience—many of whom came alone.
“What good is sitting alone in your room?”
The artist offers an unusually sad and blue look at Parisian nightlife in the painting A Corner of the Moulin de la Galette. On the left, several people wait in line, presumably to buy a drink. In the foreground, a man and a woman share a table. They each have a drink. Do they know each other?
A woman in a long, dark coat approaches the man in brown. She’s not smiling. Who—or what—is she looking for?
To isolate these three figures from everyone else, the artist crouches down and looks up, a viewpoint that obscures the background. As with his other cabaret scenes, this one tells us almost nothing about the dance hall itself. (See Renoir’s painting of the Moulin de la Galette)
Lautrec meets his muse
A key factor in the success of the Parisian cabarets was the emergence of celebrity culture. Of all the stars he portrayed, it was Lautrec’s lifelong friend Jane Avril who appreciated his talent the most. “Without a doubt, I owe him the fame I enjoyed from the moment his first poster of me appeared,” she said.
Born in Paris, the out-of-wedlock child of a nobleman and a demi-mondaine, Avril had a difficult childhood during which she often had to beg in the streets. Yet she dreamed of becoming a great dancer.
Fortunately, she was blessed with natural grace. When the famous can-can dancer Louise Weber left the Moulin Rouge, Avril was chosen to take her place. Avril’s sensuous, melancholic dancing contrasted sharply with Weber’s gloriously vulgar performances. Still, the audience adored her and she quickly became one of the most recognizable figures in Paris. A bewitched magazine editor described Avril’s stage presence as “having an air of depraved virginity.”
Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge was created at the height of the dancer’s celebrity. Lautrec painted it on sturdy cardboard, allowing the board’s natural color to become part of the design—a technique he would eventually favor. His bold gold and teal brushmarks evoke the shimmering lights of Paris after dark.
The painting shows Jane Avril wrapped up in her own thoughts. Her conservative street clothes give no hint of her stage life in the raucous dance hall. Her downward glance and closed body language take us from the realm of public personality to private individual. Lautrec is showing us the person behind the celebrity.
Mary Weaver Chapin, “Toulouse-Lautrec and the Culture of Celebrity,” 2005
“Now I will pitch my camp in a brothel”
In the winter of 1892, Lautrec was commissioned to create paintings for a renovated brothel. The women felt honored that “Monsieur Henri” had agreed to portray them. One woman even brought flowers to his studio. “They all possess a kind heart,” he remarked.
While working on the project, Lautrec discovered that women who support themselves by catering to the sexual wants of men frequently seek genuine affection from one another. His brothel paintings convey an intimacy between seer and seen that is unparalleled in the history of art. “It’s an intimacy that precludes all judgement,” said art critic John Berger.
One of Lautrec’s most beautiful paintings, The Two Friends, shows two cocottes lying in bed, enjoying a rare moment of feeling safe and content.
The women of In Bed: The Kiss must have intrigued him, as he went on to produce four separate images of them. “Just imagine, when you see the way they love, eh? The technique of tenderness,” he said.
A celebrity in his own right
When he wasn’t painting, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec hosted masquerade parties, mixed creative cocktails, and had a wonderful sense of humor that kept him at the center of things in Paris.
Even so, he had little success with women. “I should like to see the woman on this earth who has a lover uglier than me,” he said. His obsession with Montmartre’s nightlife was, in part, a way to dull his feelings of loneliness.
More than any other artist, his paintings and influential posters reflect the hedonistic optimism of the Belle Époque period. He was drawn to the energy, despite his frail constitution. “Ah, life, life!” he would say while sketching.
I was always struck by the way Lautrec changed his way of talking when art was being discussed. On any other subject he was cynical and witty, but on art he became totally serious. It was like a religious belief for him.
19th-century French artist Édouard Vuillard
Lautrec painted only one self-portrait. Made when he was just 18 years old, the picture obscures his underdeveloped legs. Instead, it captures a young man gazing into a mirror, reflecting on the life he might have led had destiny dealt him a different hand.
Postscript: If you happen to be in Florence…
See Toulouse-Lautrec. A Journey through the Paris of the Belle Époque at the Museo degli Innocenti in Florence, Italy, now thru June 7, 2026. This major exhibition showcases more than 170 works by the artist, alongside period furniture and other Belle Époque artifacts. Click the link for details.