Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in "Chilpéric"

The painting’s story and details

In 1895 the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris revived Hervé’s comic operetta Chilpéric. Marcelle Lender played the Visigothic princess Galswintha. Toulouse-Lautrec attended more than twenty performances, particularly for her second-act bolero. The large painting developed from repeated observation and drawings, as one brief episode held a regular spectator’s attention far beyond its duration on stage.

Lender’s face is lit from below. Footlights give her skin a greenish cast and sharply pick out her chin and chest. Red hair and pink flowers intensify the unusual colouring. This is an actress under stage lighting designed for an auditorium. Makeup, hair and light together create the face of a role, legible from a considerable distance.

The actress lifts both edges of her skirt. Beneath the green-yellow fabric, a pink petticoat opens in broad waves. The colour contrast makes movement legible even in a still image. Lautrec knew theatrical production well, creating posters and programmes and working with costumes and design. Here fabric is one of the dance’s principal instruments.

A leg in a black stocking emerges beneath the skirt. The pointed foot reaches left while the hands hold the fabric open like a fan. A bolero in a story about a sixth-century Frankish king is a nineteenth-century theatrical liberty. Operetta treated history freely, combining political intrigue, striking costumes, popular dances and comic entertainment.

On the right stands Don Nervoso, Galswintha’s brother in the operetta. Hands at his waist, feet apart and an elaborate costume give him an emphatically theatrical importance. His pale stockings echo the brightness of Lender’s underskirts, but he remains nearly still. Against him, the dance at the centre acquires a particularly clear direction and sweep.

King Chilpéric sits on the left. In the plot he plans to marry Galswintha for a political alliance, while his lover Fredegund schemes to kill her rival. Courtiers and scenery establish that intrigue, but occupy relatively little space in the painting. We see the performance with the concentrated attention of someone who came above all for one particular performer.

Lender also appeared in Lautrec’s drawings and colour lithographs. Prints allowed an actress’s image to circulate beyond the theatre, reaching people who might never see the performance. Here that same interest took the scale of a large canvas. Costume, artificial light and a practised gesture preserved the appearance of a production after its theatrical run had ended.