Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge

Painted in 1892 and now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, this work showing Jane Avril leaving the Moulin Rouge captures a moment of departure — the performer exiting into the street — rather than the more typical images of her dancing or arriving. The outdoor setting and the transitional act of leaving create a different emotional register from his theatrical interiors: Jane Avril alone, not performing, caught in ordinary street motion. The Wadsworth Atheneum, the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the United States, holds this as an important example of Lautrec's mature figure work.

The outdoor setting creates a cooler, more diffuse light than Lautrec's characteristic artificial-lit interiors. Jane Avril is rendered in her street clothing rather than stage costume, the figure simplified through emphatic contour with the surrounding street environment sketched in with characteristic economy.