| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901)
Moulin de la Galette, 1889
Oil on canvas, 35 7/8 x 39 5/8 in. (88.5 x 101.3 cm)
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.458
Gallery 242
"Against a back-drop of dancers, interpreted in caricature-like fashion, sit four figures. The most beautiful is the young woman at the lower left who turns away from the dance floor to look at something or someone outside of the picture. She is, in many ways, an archetypal woman of the fin de siecle, a distant muse lost in her own thoughts. Her superb profile almost glows, expressing her vulnerability in the raucous, almost vulgar, public setting.
The two other women, one older and the other thinner than the first woman, sit passively, waiting to be asked to dance. The single man behind them seems unaware of their presence. He extends his body over the railing as he looks intently beyond the picture plane, counteracting the gaze of the beautiful woman in the opposite direction. In this way, Toulouse-Lautrec suggests the ultimate isolation of urban dwellers like these, as well as the futility of their hopes and permanence of their loneliness."
(text excerpt from Richard Brettell's "Post-Impressionists," Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 25. See the Art Explorer resource "Toulouse-Lautrec's Urban World.") |
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