The dancer at The Mouin Rouge
Henri Toulouse Lautrec
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Painted in1890, oil on canvas measuring height: 115.5 cm width: 150 cm. Currently held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art
This is the second of a number of graphic paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec depicting the Moulin Rouge cabaret built in Paris in 1889. It portrays two dancers dancing the can-can in the middle of the crowded dance hall. A recently discovered inscription by Toulouse-Lautrec on the back of the painting reads: "The instruction of the new ones by Valentine the Boneless.” This means that the man to the left of the woman dancing is Valentin le désossé, a well-known dancer at the Moulin Rouge, and he is teaching the newest addition to the cabaret. To the right is a mysterious aristocratic woman in pink. The background also features many aristocratic people such as poet Edward Yeats, the club owner and even Toulouse-Lautrec's father. (Wikipedia 2025)
Oil on canvas board. Size 11” x 14”
I love the vibrant colour and the exhuberance of the original but felt that copying the whole painting at a size I could manage, would make it so reduced in size as to be a worthless exercise. So I took the main dancer and a few of the bystanders – ignoring the pink woman entirely!
Initially I thought it looked like a very simple copy… how wrong can you be! The seemingly cartoonish characters are very complex with a multiltude of tones and hues. None of the colour matching was helped by the variety of copies available online; ranging from almost completely beige to an range of hot colours more reminiscent of Gaughin!
I worked for a prolonged period on the shapes and colours of the composition, forcing myself to leave the brown/red/grey outlines until I was satisfied I was as close as I was going to get.
I’m not unhappy with the result, but its no where near an accurate copy with the floor failing really badly!
Notes to me......
• Don’t be mislead by simply drawings – they mask the complexity of the painting!