Café and Cabaret:
Toulouse-Lautrec's Paris
The French aristocrat Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), one of the most innovative artists of the late nineteenth century, is known for his bold and subtle images of performers in the centers of Parisian entertainment in the 1880s and 1890s: the café concerts and cabaret nightclubs in the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre. Despite his short life, Toulouse-Lautrec was enormously productive and succeeded in developing a style uniquely suited to the celebrity culture of this raffish district. He combined a wicked, caricatural eye for the signature features and body language of his subjects (who included his friends the singers and dancers May Milton, Jane Avril, and La Goulue) with the radical use of broad flat colors, strong silhouettes, and unusual points of view.
