Lautrec's many depictions of the men-about-town, prostitutes, and performers who frequented Montmartre cafés and dance halls combine candid and often psychologically penetrating character studies with an incisive, linear approach. Among his best-known images, these works appealed to the turn-of-the-century taste for an art that reflected modern life. This painting served as a preparatory study for a color lithograph commissioned by the Boussod & Valadon gallery in 1892, which Lautrec called Flirt. It depicts his friend, the English painter William Tom Warrener, and two dancers, Rayon d'Or and La Sauterelle, at the Moulin Rouge, a Montmartre nightspot.

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