# La Goulue Arriving at the Moulin Rouge with Two Women [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Henri de]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on cardboard, 79 x 59 cm ## Commentary 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 Elysée-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. ## Related artworks - [A Corner of the Moulin de la Galette]() - [Admiral Viaud]() - [After the Meal]() - [Alfred la Guigne]() - [Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant]() - [Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant]() - [An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris]() - [At the Circus: Horse and Monkes Dressage]() - [At the Moulin Rouge: La Goulue and her Sister]() - [At the Moulin Rouge or The Promenade]() - [At the Moulin Rouge]() - [At the Moulin Rouge]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()