Marcelle Lender

About Marcelle Lender

Marcelle Lender (born on September 17th, 1861, as Anne-Marie Marcelle Bastien) was a French singer, dancer, and stage actress who became immortalized as a muse for the post-impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

She began her professional dancing career at age sixteen, and made a name for herself performing in the theatrical and cabaret hub of Montmartre, notably at the Théâtre des Variétés, in Paris.

In 1895, she starred in a revival of the comic operetta Chilpéric by Hervé, performing a lively flamenco-style bolero while wearing a striking, flamboyant costume topped with a headpiece featuring two giant red poppies. Captivated by her flame-red hair and stage presence, Toulouse-Lautrec famously attended the show 20 nights in a row just to watch and sketch her. When a friend asked why he kept returning, he reportedly replied that he only came to look at her splendid back.

She can be seen in "Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in Chilpéric", a massive oil painting capturing her mid-dance, currently housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, and in "Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender, en buste", an eight-color lithograph print, and one of the artist's most famous and sought-after color prints worldwide.

She gradually stepped away from the limelight as the theatrical tastes of Paris shifted after World War I, with her last known performance being "L'Institut de Beauté", in 1913.