Henry Samary della 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.