When the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889, it quickly became the epicenter of nightlife in Montmartre, the bohemian neighborhood just north of central Paris. Inside, a corner table was permanently reserved for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He could be found there most nights—sketching.
In fact, he appears in the background of his own masterpiece, At the Moulin Rouge. He’s walking alongside his cousin, a medical student who towers over him. About 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 reveals a long history of intermarriage—a practice now known to increase the risk of genetic disorders.
Because his parents were first cousins, this hereditary link likely stunted his growth, leaving his legs brittle and childlike while his torso developed normally. Could this be why he shied away from self-portraiture? Or at least faced it with a sharp sense of irony?
A gift for empathy
Being an aristocrat who stands well under five feet tall informs Lautrec’s perspective. Many of his paintings express a profound 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. Indistinct rooftops visible through the glass suggest she’s dreaming of a life beyond this low-rent garret.
Her bony hand, roughened by years of scrubbing laundry, contrasts with her lithe body. The dissonance between her stiff arm and the undulating shape 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 transient moments of daily life. However, his painting style was clearly different from that of Impressionists like Monet, Pissarro, and Morisot.
Drawing with paint
In 1888, he began experimenting with bolder colors and significantly thinner paint. Moreover, he adopted a new style influenced by Japanese woodblock prints: long, sweeping strokes to outline forms, and short strokes to add texture to flat areas of color.
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 applied his paint in translucent washes. This allowed the unprimed canvas to peek through, creating a sense of depth that makes the dance hall feel more spacious.
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?)
Set in a historic windmill, 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 sad and blue glimpse into Parisian nightlife. On the left, a queue forms to buy drinks. In the foreground, a man and a woman share a table. Despite sitting side by side, they are psychologically miles apart.
Meanwhile, a woman in a long, dark coat approaches the man in brown. She’s not smiling. Who—or what—do you think she’s looking for?
To isolate these three figures from everyone else, the artist crouched down and looked up—a viewpoint that obscures 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 all the stars he portrayed, it was Lautrec’s 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 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. Still, the audience adored her and soon she became one of the most recognizable figures in Paris. A bewitched magazine editor described her 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 increasingly favor. He used bold teal and gold brushmarks to 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 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’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 curled up in bed, enjoying a moment of safety and contentment.
In Bed: The Kiss features two women the artist painted on four separate occasions. “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, 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, in part, 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 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, reflecting on the life he might have led had destiny dealt him a different hand.
Postscript: If you happen to be in San Diego…
See CafĂ©s 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.