When the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889, it became the vibrant center of nightlife in Montmartre, a bohemian neighborhood just north of central Paris. Inside the cabaret, a corner table was permanently reserved for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He could be seen at it most nights—sketching.
In fact, there he is in the background of his own masterpiece, At the Moulin Rouge. He’s walking alongside his cousin, a lanky medical student who towers over him. Regarding his own height, the artist said wryly, “To think 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. His family tree shows a long history of intermarriage—a practice that carries a genetic toll.
His parents were first cousins. This hereditary link almost certainly stunted his growth, leaving his legs underdeveloped and brittle even as his torso developed normally. As a result, he rarely painted self-portraits. And when he did, it was with a note of irony.
A gift for empathy
Being an aristocrat who stood under five feet tall informs Lautrec’s perspective. Many of his paintings express 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 to gaze out a window. The indistinct rooftops visible through the glass suggest she’s dreaming of a life beyond this stifling garret.
Her bony hand, roughened by years of scrubbing laundry, contrasts with her youthful body. The dissonance between her stiff arm and the curved slope of her back conveys 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 his contemporaries, Lautrec enjoyed depicting the fleeting moments of daily life. However, his artistic vision was markedly different from that of Impressionists like Monet, Morisot, and Pissarro.
Drawing with paint
In 1888, he began using bolder colors and significantly thinner paint. Inspired by the aesthetics of Japanese woodblock prints, he applied sweeping strokes to outline forms and shorter strokes to add texture to flat areas of color.
In contrast to the Impressionists, Toulouse-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 let unprimed cardboard peek through his translucent color washes. This creates a sense of depth, making the dance hall feel more spacious.
He holds the composition together with a deft mix of horizontal and vertical lines, empty and crowded spaces, 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?)
Housed in a historic windmill, the Moulin de la Galette was Lautrec’s first cabaret scene. Although dancing was the main draw, the artist turned his gaze toward the audience, many of whom came alone.
Different shades of blue
A Corner of the Moulin de la Galette offers an unusually melancholic look at Parisian nightlife. On the left, a queue forms to buy drinks. On the right, a man and woman share a table, yet they seem disconnected.
Meanwhile, 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 the crowd, Lautrec crouched down and looked up—a viewpoint that obscured the background. As with most of his 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
The emergence of celebrity culture was a key factor in the success of Parisian cabarets. Of the many stars he portrayed, it was his lifelong friend Jane Avril who most appreciated his talent. “I owe him the fame I enjoyed from the moment his first poster of me appeared,” she once said.
Born in Paris, the out-of-wedlock daughter 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. Luckily, 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. Even so, the audience adored her. Avril soon became one of the most recognizable figures in Paris. A bewitched magazine editor described her on 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 exposed surface to become part of the design—a technique he would increasingly favor. Vivid streaks of teal and yellow 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 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 newly renovated brothel. The women were honored that “Monsieur Henri” had agreed to portray them. One woman even brought flowers to his studio. “They all possess a kind heart,” he said.
While working on the project, Lautrec learned 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 is an intimacy that precludes all judgement,” said critic John Berger.
One of Lautrec’s most beautiful paintings, The Two Friends, shows two cocottes curled up in bed, enjoying a moment of safety and contentment.
A closely related work, In Bed: The Kiss, depicts two women the artist painted on four separate occasions. “Just imagine, when you see the way they love. The technique of tenderness,” he said.
Loneliness runs both ways
When he wasn’t painting, 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 once said. His obsession with portraying Montmartre’s nightlife was, to some extent, a way to dull his feelings of loneliness.
More than those of any other artist, his paintings and groundbreaking posters reflect the hedonism of Belle Époque Paris. 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
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted only one true self-portrait. Created when he was just 18 years old, the composition hides his underdeveloped legs. Instead, it shows a young man gazing into a mirror, imagining the life he might have led had destiny dealt him a different hand.
Postscript: If you happen to be near San Diego…
See Cafés and Cabarets: The Spectacular Art of Toulouse-Lautrec at the San Diego Museum of art thru September 20, 2026. This exhibition shares dozens of works from the museum’s remarkably comprehensive permanent collection.