At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance

Painted in 1890 and now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this large canvas showing the dance floor at the Moulin Rouge is among Lautrec's major early paintings of the venue that he made his primary subject. The work predates his celebrated Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 and shows him working through the compositional and chromatic challenges of the large dance hall on canvas. La Goulue — the star dancer — and her partner Valentin le Désossé are visible among the crowd, with Lautrec himself reportedly included in the background with his cousin Dr. Tapié de Céleyran. The Philadelphia Museum's strong Post-Impressionist holdings make this a fitting location.

The large canvas orchestrates a complex crowd scene around the central movement of the dancing figures, with the surrounding spectators creating a framing ring of observers. Lautrec's oil technique at this scale maintains its characteristic flatness, the figures simplified into their essential postures and expressions without academic finish.