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 Rouge is a cleverly observed group portrait of the (in some cases) infamous customers and entertainers who formed part of the artist’s circle. Standing in the background, the dancer La Goulue arranges her hair. Seated at the table are dancers La Macarona and Jane Avril, as well as photographer Paul Sescau, poet Édouard Dujardin, and vintner Maurice Guibert. Singer May Milton peers out from the right edge of the painting, her face harshly lit and a shocking acid green the Moulin Rouge was designed to have electric lighting and Toulouse-Lautrec reveled in the artistic possibilities of artificial glare. The artist himself appears in the center background of the painting, a diminutive figure accompanied by his much taller cousin, the physician Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran.

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