| Artist |
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Marie |
It is impossible not to think of Renoir’s ecstatic treatment of this same subject thirteen years earlier. Renoir sets his figures in the open air, caressing them with a silky, sun-flecked light. His women are radiant and his men, ardently attentive. Lautrec’s scene is placed indoors. The bad, shaded illumination is demoralising. The onlookers are predatory and wear guarded expressions. Dancers cavort on the treadmill of pleasure with only an automatic abandon. Although it is true the clientele of the music hall had changed for the worse in the intervening years, the shift in interpretation between paintings is symptomatic. A gorgeous century of progress had begun to break up. |
