William Tom Warrener, an English painter and friend of Lautrec's, appears as a top-hatted gentleman chatting up two female companions at the Moulin Rouge, the dance hall that epitomized the colorful and tawdry nightlife of fin-de-siecle Paris. The women's suggestive attitudes-and Warrener's ear, reddened in embarrassment-indicate the risque nature of their conversation. This painting served as a preparatory study for a color lithograph of 1892.