Moulin de la Galette

1889 was the year Paris raised the Eiffel Tower for the world's fair, and the year the Moulin Rouge opened at the foot of the Montmartre hill, built for visitors with money to spend. The Moulin de la Galette sat up at the top, older and local, a dance hall for shopgirls and labourers. Lautrec was 24. He made his sketches in the hall and finished the canvas in the studio, thinning the paint with turpentine until it soaks into the weave like a drawing. A wooden rail cuts straight across the middle, the dancing goes on behind it, and the women in front sit and wait. Théo van Gogh saw the picture at the Indépendants that September and wrote to his brother Vincent, then in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, that it was very good.