Henry Samary de la Comédie Française

Lautrec painted this in 1889, the year the Moulin Rouge opened its doors and he began the nightlife pictures he is remembered for. Henry Samary was a young actor at the Comedie-Francaise, the grand state theatre, and Lautrec catches him not in a serious role but mid-performance in an evening coat, monocle in hand, one leg thrown forward across a stage floor that tilts up steeply behind him. It is painted on cardboard, thinned oil brushed on fast, the way he liked to work. Samary came from a family of well-known stage performers. He died in Berlin in 1902, only 36.