Great art is timeless, and speaks to us across time, culture, and space. Yet great works come from real people living real lives—whether their work was made 5 minutes or 500 years ago. In this series, popular Smithsonian Associates speaker Paul Glenshaw looks at great works of art in their historical context. He delves into the time of the artist, explores the present they inhabited, and what shaped their vision and creations.

The scene that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicts in this 1895 painting evokes the cabarets and music halls that blossomed in Paris during the Belle Époque—a heady time between the Commune of 1871 and World War I. Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in Chilpéric also reflects the brilliant but self-destructive artist’s unrequited admiration for music hall star, Marcelle Lender, painted performing in the comic operetta Chilpéric. The play—a send-up of sixth-century political intrigue among Franks and Visigoths—provides a perfect backdrop for the work’s expression of Paris’s joyful chaos.

Glenshaw introduces Toulouse-Lautrec as he plumbs the depths of his city’s exploding night life and compulsively returns every evening to the historic Théatre des Variétés to watch Lender perform. He presents a study in the collision of larger-than-life personalities—and how this burst of imagination and passion left an indelible mark on art and on history.

Glenshaw is an artist, educator, author, and filmmaker with more than 30 years’ experience working across disciplines in the arts, history, and sciences. He teaches drawing for Smithsonian Associates and studied painting at Washington University in St. Louis.

World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit*

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*Enrolled participants in the World Art History Certificate Program receive 1/2 elective credit. Not yet enrolled? Learn about the program, its benefits, and how to register here.