Jeanne avril dansant

Painted in 1892 on cardboard and now at the Musée d'Orsay, this depiction of Jane Avril dancing is among the most celebrated images of the Moulin Rouge's most celebrated dancer. Avril's dancing style was famously individual — neurotic, passionate, self-absorbed, quite different from the collective energy of La Goulue's chahut. Lautrec captured her in multiple paintings and drawings before his 1893 poster transformed her image into an international icon. This Orsay work shows her in the characteristic inward-turned quality of her dance, the figure rendered with the angular, Japanese-influenced graphic economy of his mature style.

The dancing figure is caught in a characteristic moment of Jane Avril's style — the self-absorbed, spiralling quality of her movement conveyed through the angular, slightly off-balance posture that Lautrec identified as her signature. The cardboard support and thin oil give the work its characteristically direct, translucent surface quality.