Lautrec’s dancing muse

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), diminutive aristocrat and radical artist, was roundly travestied in John Huston’s 1952 film Moulin Rouge, and at once entered the popular imagination as an atrociously romanticised figure doomed for early death.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), diminutive aristocrat and radical artist, was roundly travestied in John Huston’s 1952 film Moulin Rouge, and at once entered the popular imagination as an atrociously romanticised figure doomed for early death. In fact, Lautrec was a tough and original artist, incisive and unsparing in his observation though also compassionate of the human comedy, a perfect painter of what then passed for modern life. His images of the extraordinary dancer Jane Avril summon up Montmartre in the 1890s, but this exhibition aims to go beyond that evocative and enjoyable designation. It examines the close friendship between artist and model, but most particularly it explores the background of the dancer, and the context in which she became such an admirable subject.