A Woman at the Élysée Montmartre (Femme à l’Élysée Montmartre)

Louis Anquetin · 1888

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

90.5 × 72 cm (35 5/8 × 28 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Painted at the height of Montmartre's golden era, Louis Anquetin's *A Woman at the Élysée Montmartre* captures the electric atmosphere of Paris's most fashionable dance hall with a precision that feels almost cinematic. Anquetin was at the forefront of Cloisonnism, a style he developed alongside Émile Bernard in the late 1880s that borrowed the bold outlines and flat planes of colour from Japanese woodblock prints and medieval stained glass. Where the Impressionists dissolved form into light, Anquetin reasserted it — giving his figures a graphic clarity that set him apart from his contemporaries. The result is a painting that feels simultaneously modern and deeply rooted in craft. Anquetin was a close associate of both Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec during this period, and all three were regulars at the very venues he immortalised on canvas — which lends this particular work an authenticity beyond mere observation. Now held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the original remains largely unknown to the wider public despite its historical significance. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made using traditional techniques on canvas, preserving the defining qualities of Anquetin's style — his deliberate outlines, confident colour choices, and the hushed tension of a single figure caught in a crowded room.