The artist who created the impressions of 'Gay Paree', Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, is now the subject of a major retrospective opening in Canberra tonight.
The colourful, moody images of dancing women at the Moulin Rouge is synonymous with Paris in the late 1800s.
“He's an individual and he liked painting the underbelly of Parisienne life, of Gay Paree in 1890s,” said Ron Radford AM, Director of the National Gallery of Australia.
“He wasn't interested in the concerts or the opera; he was interested in the cabarets and brothels.”
Lautrec arrived at the bohemian heart of Paris to work as an artist, despite being born into aristocracy.
He could not participate in sport as his father wanted him to. At only one anda half meters tall, he suffered health conditions attributed to intermarriage, as his parents were first cousins.
“Lautrec really wanted to impress his father, so he wanted to be a professional artist and not a dabbling amateur,” said Jane Kinsman, curator of the exhibition.
Becoming a chronicler of personalities, he took the light brushstrokes of the Post Impressionists, and applied them to the less glamorous side of life - women who turned to prostitution or dancing for a living.
“He invents a new form of portrait, of figures of the cabaret, figures of the theatre, in their own environment, moving in their own environment,” said Radford.
“Not just seated portraits, waiting to be posed, but performers in their own space.”
Perhaps Lautrec's greatest legacy is his transformation of poster design into an artform, creating masterpieces such as his famous 'Moulin Rouge: La Goulue' poster.
His compositions were influenced by the flatness of Japanese woodblock prints which were popular at the time, with shadowy figures silhouetted in the foreground and the action in the middle ground.
While Lautrec died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the age of 36, he was prolific in his output.
The collection of over 100 paintings, drawings, prints and posters will be on show at the National Gallery of Australia until April.
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