Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

1891

Lithograph printed in four colors on three sheets, 190 × 116.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A dancer kicks high above a crowd of black silhouettes on a street poster. This advertisement launched the artist's career as a poster designer.

A painter's eye is put to work selling a dance hall: flat color, bold lettering and a cropped crowd. Art and advertising now shared the same street wall.
The dance hall commissioned the poster, which stands about six feet tall.
Look for the gray dancer in front, Valentin le Désossé, whose stage name means boneless.
The Paris printer Affiches Américaines, of Charles Lévy, produced the sheets.
The Met acquired this complete three-sheet impression in 1932.

The hall first opened its doors in 1889, on the boulevard de Clichy. Its star dancer went by a nickname meaning the glutton.

Color lithograph: A print made by drawing each color on its own stone, then printing the stones in turn on one sheet.