The Review Toulouse-Lautrec at the Courtauld: Just beyond the Moulin Rouge

The Courtauld Gallery, in the west wing of There is medical material on display here Somerset House, is one of London’s best- too, because both Lautrec and Avril were kept secrets. Images you’ve known forever ‘interesting cases’. She had spent catch you off guard in the Courtauld’s 18 months as a patient at the Salpetriere creaky-floored, airy rooms — Cranach’s hospital, where staff and students have Adam and Eve , van Gogh’s bandaged head, included Charcot, Tourette, Babinski, and Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and A Bar at Freud, because of a movement disorder the Folies-Bergeres . Now there’s another thought to have been Sydenham’s chorea. treat. Nancy Ireson’s Toulouse-Lautrec and Medical voyeurism was a feature of late Jane Avril — Beyond the Moulin Rouge 19th century Parisian life and Charcot’s brings together works from European and public lectures included the display of the American collections with the Courtauld’s interesting cases being studied in the own 1892 portrait of Jane Avril in a compact Department of Movement Disorders. At the visual exploration of the relationship Salpetriere’s Bal des folles, members of the between the artist and the celebrated public were invited to dance with the Moulin Rouge dancer. Avril was nicknamed strange patients. Jane Avril claimed that La Melinite, after a powerful form of dancing cured her unwanted movements explosive, and was exotic, alluring, and a and her career was born. She was admired star of the Montmartre scene. There are the as an energetic, sensual, and idiosyncratic originals of those posters that everyone had dancer — Lautrec’s friend Paul Leclercq on their walls in the 1970s, the spectacular described the scene: At the Moulin Rouge , with Lautrec himself Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 –1901) ’In the midst of the crowd there was a stir, Jane Avril, c.1891 –1892. Oil on cardboard, in the background, on loan from Chicago, 63.2 x 42.2 cm. Sterling and Francine Clark Art and a number of affecting portraits of Avril and a line of people started to form. Jane Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. — pensive, haughty, lonely and distracted. Avril was dancing, twirling, gracefully, Photo: Michael Agee. As the chronicler of Parisian bohemian lightly, a little madly; pale, skinny, life in the 1890s, Lautrec didn’t pull his thoroughbred, she twirled and reversed, When you have absorbed all this punches and both the public and private weightless, fed on flowers: Lautrec was Lautrec/Avril material, take your time going faces of Jane Avril are uncompromising and shouting out his admiration.’ downstairs and be sure not to miss the unflattering. Best of all Lautrec captures treasures on show — a marvellous pot the ebullience and energy of her Her movement disorder may have pourri of medieval and renaissance gems, movements in dance, as in the famous contributed to her dance technique — ‘an terrific Impressionists and Post- poster for the Jardin de Paris, and her orchid in a frenzy’. Impressionists, and a fine showing of British elegance in the design for the Divan Lautrec was also of considerable and European 20th century art. And, if the Japonais poster. medical interest. The son of two aristocratic thought of the NHS reforms and the first cousins, he prospect of Monitor and clinical senators Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). At the Moulin Rouge , 1892 –1893. sustained femoral breathing down your neck is all too much, Oil on canvas, 123 x 141 cm. fractures at the you can always pick up a bottle of Absinthe The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. ages of 13 and from the gallery shop on the way home. 14 years and malunion was Roger Jones, accompanied by BJGP Editor, RCGP, London. retarded growth, so that his adult Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril — Beyond height was only the Moulin Rouge is on at the Courtauld 1.54 metres. He is Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London thought to have WC2R 0RN (www.courtauld.ac.uk) until suffered from 18 September 2011. pycnodysostosis, a lysosomal storage disease of the bone DOI: 10.3399/bjgp11X588565 with multiple skeletal and dental manifestations. He ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE was also a serious Roger Jones alcoholic and died Royal College of General Practitioners, at the age of 1 Bow Churchyard, London, EC4M 9DQ, UK. 36 years. E-mail: [email protected]

524 British Journal of General Practice, August 2011