A Dança Mourisca

La Goulue had been the queen of the Moulin Rouge, the cancan dancer everyone in Paris knew, and Toulouse-Lautrec's posters had helped make her famous. By 1895 that fame had faded. She had grown heavier, left the cabaret, and set up on her own as a belly-dancer at the Foire du Trône, a travelling fair on the edge of the city. She asked Lautrec to decorate her booth, and he painted two big panels quickly, in oil, meant to stand outside in the weather. This is one of them, showing her Eastern dance inside the tent. The audience is a crowd of real Paris faces he knew, among them the writer Oscar Wilde, turned away from us at the back.