At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance

The Moulin Rouge had opened in 1889, and by 1890 Toulouse-Lautrec was one of its regulars, close enough to the place to paint it from the inside. The tall thin man in the middle, guiding a dancer through her steps, is Valentin le Désossé, Valentin the Boneless, a famous contortionist dancer whose real trade was a wine merchant. An inscription found on the back of the canvas says he is teaching the new girls, which is exactly the scene. Off to the right stands a woman in pink, dressed far too respectably for this crowd, and among the well-off onlookers behind is the painter's own father. Lautrec, who came from an old aristocratic family himself, kept painting this world of dancers and hangers-on until it wore him out. The picture is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.