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May Milton, May Belfort, Louise Weber and more
May Milton only danced one season in Paris.
The petite “English Miss,” as theater marquees later declared her, moved to France some time around 1891 and made fast friends with the bohemian set. She danced ballet, landed a gig on “a small, undistinguished stage” and drank absinthe with other stars of the nightlife scene. Some had the means to help an “English Miss” down on her luck, and others, just like her, were looking to make their own.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril were two of those friends of lesser means, but they had their own ways of helping May. Jane, already a headliner at the Moulin Rouge, taught her new friend how to cancan, a much trendier, more marketable dance than the ballet May practiced. The two women later roomed together in a dilapidated house at the top of Montmartre Hill, just blocks away from the Moulin Rouge.
Meanwhile, Lautrec included May in many of his posters and lithographs, helping to increase her name recognition around town. Picasso even included one of these posters of May in the background of The Blue Room, one of the relics of his legendary Blue Period.
But while Picasso was seeing blue, Lautrec was seeing green: in particular, an eerie shade special to May Milton. He created a number of lithographs, prints and posters depicting May with a lime-colored halo or chartreuse hue. Was he alluding to the absinthe-tinged glow of stage lights and street lamps? The literal newness of this “green” expat friend? Or was he just Lautrec, being Lautrec? We know he was mixing a lot of cocktails alongside his paints.
Not much is known about May after her life in Paris. She commissioned a poster from Lautrec to announce her move to New York in 1892, but no green business, this time. She wanted something blue, bright and cheerful to announce a stateside tour (although, funnily enough, take a peek at his original sketches for the concept — he couldn’t resist!). After the move, however, her name disappears.
What we do know: some time between 1892 and 1895, Lautrec completed At the Moulin Rouge, a grand oil painting to commemorate his Montmartre milieu. Jane Avril is pictured front and center — her iconic red hair glowing like a flame — and Lautrec even painted himself at her table.
May is there, too, looming larger than any other figure in the work. “Harshly lit” and “acid green,” per the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting lives today. Even when May left Montmartre, her Frankenstein-colored face remained, preserved forever as a green star of “At the Moulin Rouge.”
But “forever” isn’t quite right. Because for nearly 20 years, people didn’t see May in that painting. Something happened between 1895, when Lautrec completed the work, and 1914, when Lautrec’s long-time gallerist sold At the Moulin Rouge. Someone took a knife and sliced one fourth of the canvas away, removing May’s green face entirely.
Art historians debate the how, when and why behind this. Some theorize Lautrec himself made the cut. Others suggest the dealer did so because May’s “strange appearance made the work hard to sell.” But many, including the University of Texas’s Reinhold Heller, think someone had more sinister motivations in removing May from the painting.
“The painting is not what we have wanted it to be,” Heller wrote. He goes on to argue that the decision to “denigrate — even annihilate” May’s green visage was part of the gallerists’ plan to erase her open queerness and sanitize the painted scene.
May took a number of lady lovers — Jane Avril was even rumored to be one of them! May Belfort, another queer woman in the Montmartre scene, was linked to May Milton. Belfort, a popular Irish singer, used to carry a black cat onstage and sing loudly (and winkingly) about how much she loved to pet her “fond pussycat.”
Lautrec didn’t include Belfort in At the Moulin Rouge, but he did include another of May’s rumored lovers: Louise Weber, known as “La Goulue,” or “The Glutton,” to Moulin Rouge audiences. La Goulue carried on an open affair with Môme Fromage, another Moulin Rouge dancer. One of Lautrec’s lithographs identified La Goulue and Môme Fromage as “sisters,” Lautrec’s code for “lovers.”
La Goulue and Mome Fromage are even pictured with May in another of Lautrec’s works, linking arms and looking glamorous.
In At the Moulin Rouge, Louise stands before a mirror, touching up her hair. To me, the woman standing beside her bears a strong resemblance to Môme Fromage.
So that’s the question, right? Why did some of these queer women stay painted in, even as May’s face was knifed away? Was it truly a matter of composition? Did it really all come down to the green face?
You can visit the painting today at The Art Institute of Chicago. Look closely; there’s a faint line just to the left of May’s face, the only remnant of her time out of the limelight.
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More:
His name was Bélizaire, The New York Times. I saw this painting in March, after reading about this story about its journey to The Met. New Yorkers — you should go visit.
Posters with Pride, Rennerts Gallery
Lecture: Lautrec and the Celebrity Culture of Paris, The Art Institute of Chicago
We’re still painting people out today, too. I went down a Reddit rabbit hole on this (don’t ask me why this users is painting out Spice Girls?!)
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