Loie Fuller at the Folies-Bergère

Loie Fuller (1862-1928) was an American dancer who became one of the most celebrated performers in fin-de-siècle Paris, famous for her 'serpentine dance' in which she manipulated vast amounts of silk fabric under colored electric light to create visually spectacular effects. Toulouse-Lautrec was fascinated by her performances at the Folies-Bergère from 1892 onward and produced multiple paintings and lithographs attempting to capture the uniquely photographic problem her performances posed — constant motion, colored light, and fabric whose volume and movement were the performance. His Fuller images are among his most formally experimental.

Lautrec's Fuller paintings abandon his usual earthy palette for the acid yellows, greens, and purples that electric light produced on her silk costume. His brushwork becomes unusually fluid and swirling in these works, the paint itself enacting the fabric's movement in a way that conventional description could not achieve.