La Goulue Arriving at the Moulin Rouge with Two Women
by TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Henri de, Oil on cardboard, 79 x 59 cm
La Goulue, actually called Louise Weber (1870-1929), was the most successful can-can dancer of her time. She appeared at the Moulin de la Galette, the Alcazar, the Elys�e-Montmartre, the Jardin de Paris, and later especially at the Moulin Rouge, frequently with Valentin the Contortionist, her partner in the quadrille. She was given her nickname as a result of her uncontrolled appetite (goulue = greedy).
La Goulue was from Alsace and worked as a washerwoman until she was discovered. When she became too fat and the Moulin Rouge withdrew the quadrille, she opened her own show booth, which Lautrec decorated in 1895. After that she worked as a flower-seller, in 1896 even as a wrestler at the Neuilly fair, and as an animal tamer. Later she lived with a man who exhibited her as a fairground curiosity in 1925. She deteriorated even more, survived for a time as a maid in a brothel, and died lonely and impoverished.