La Goulue au Moulin Rouge

The Moulin Rouge had opened in Montmartre in 1889, and within a year its biggest draw was a former laundress named Louise Weber, known to all of Paris as La Goulue, the glutton. Toulouse-Lautrec painted her here around 1891, seen from behind and still unmistakable, red topknot piled high, sweeping in with two women beside her. He worked on cardboard, fast and thin, the way he sketched the dancers he watched night after night from the same cabaret tables. La Goulue was the queen of the cancan then, earning far more than she ever had scrubbing linen. Within a few years the fashion moved on. She left the stage, tried a fairground act, and ended her life poor, selling cigarettes and matches on the street.