The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge

Toulouse-Lautrec painted The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge in 1892, when he was 28 and at the center of the Parisian nightlife he had been depicting for three years. The Moulin Rouge had opened in 1889 in the Pigalle district of Paris, and by 1892 it was the most famous cabaret in the city. Toulouse-Lautrec was a regular customer, a friend of the dancers and the owner, and the painter who made the Moulin Rouge famous outside Paris through his posters and paintings. The painting shows William Tom Warrener, an English painter and friend of Toulouse-Lautrec, in conversation with two women at the Moulin Rouge. Warrener stands at the center, wearing a top hat and a dark coat, his face turned toward the woman at the right. His ear is red, which Toulouse-Lautrec painted to suggest embarrassment at whatever the woman is saying. The two women wear the heavy makeup and bright clothes of the Moulin Rouge dancers. The woman at the left has a green-tinted face and orange hair. The woman at the right has a white face with red lips and dark eyes. The background is the orange-red interior of the cabaret, painted in broad, flat strokes. Toulouse-Lautrec was born to an aristocratic family in Albi, in southern France. He broke both legs in adolescence, and the bones stopped growing, leaving him with a normal-sized torso and very short legs. He moved to Paris in 1882 to study painting, and by 1888 he was living in Montmartre, the neighborhood where the cabarets and dance halls of Paris were concentrated. He painted what he saw: dancers, prostitutes, singers, and the customers who came to watch them. His paintings and posters of the Moulin Rouge, the Divan Japonais, and the Moulin de la Galette are the visual record of Parisian nightlife in the 1890s. This painting served as a preparatory study for a color lithograph of the same subject, which Toulouse-Lautrec produced later in 1892. The lithograph is one of his most famous prints, and the painting shows the directness and speed of his working method. The paint is applied in rapid, confident strokes, with the figures built in flat areas of color outlined in dark blue and black. The faces are painted in a few strokes, with the features indicated rather than described. Oil on cardboard, 85 by 66 centimeters. Toulouse-Lautrec painted on cardboard rather than canvas, a preference that gave his paintings a matte, absorbent surface. The paint sinks into the cardboard, creating a flat, unmodulated color that has the quality of a poster or a print. The orange-red background is applied in broad, thin strokes, with the brushmarks visible. The figures are built in thicker paint, with the top hat and dark coat of the Englishman providing a sharp contrast to the bright faces of the women. The vertical format and bold palette make this print work well in a living room, dining room, or any room with white walls. The orange-reds, greens, and blues pair with modern furniture, white walls, and rooms with a bold or eclectic design. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the figures room to read. The painting has a lively, social quality that suits rooms where people gather or entertain. The painting entered the Met's collection in 1967, bequeathed by Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot. It is one of the few Toulouse-Lautrec paintings in an American museum. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.