Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec designed Moulin Rouge: La Goulue in 1891, his first commissioned poster. The nightclub had opened two years earlier, and one of Lautrec's paintings already hung near its entrance. This six-foot-tall lithograph advertising the star dancers made him famous overnight when thousands of copies appeared across Paris.

La Goulue ("The Glutton") performs the cancan alongside her partner Valentin le Désossé ("Boneless Valentin"), whose gangly silhouette dominates the foreground. The audience becomes a mass of black silhouettes, a technique borrowed from Japanese prints. La Goulue's white underskirts catch the light against the warm yellow and orange tones of the background.

The poster measures approximately 191 by 117 centimeters. Because most copies were pasted as street advertising and destroyed, surviving examples are valuable. One sold at auction in 1999 for $241,500, reportedly a record for a vintage advertising poster. Copies are held at MoMA, The Met, and other major museums.