“It was Abadie who made the Sacred Heart, but it was God who did that…” announces this pretty young woman, partially naked, presenting her buttocks to the penitent monk attacking the climb of the steps leading to the Sacred Heart.
The Moulin de la Galette, a festive hotspot on rue Lepic in Montmartre, frequented by illustrious figures, such as the artists Renoir, Van Dongen, Picasso, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, but also by singers and dancers like La Goulue, will become a tavern and a famous ball. In the foreground a black cat which reminds us of the sign of this famous cabaret co-founded by Adolphe Willette.
Adolphe Willette, born in 1857 in Chalons en Champagne, died in Paris in 1926, is a French painter, illustrator, caricaturist and lithographer, trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, who exhibited at the Salon from 1881. He settled in Montmartre in 1882, and participated in the creation of the cabaret Le Chat Noir which he decorated with panels of his own composition. There he met notably Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh and Georges Seurat. He founded his own magazine "Le Pierrot", decorated the Moulin Rouge, collaborated on numerous illustrated publications including "l'Assiette au Beure", "Le Pied de Nez" with Steinlen, "Le Courrier Français", "Le Chat Noir" , “le Triboulet”…Guillaume Apollinaire will be one of his fervent admirers. Always in excess, Willette founded the Republic of Montmartre with his artist friends Jean-Louis Forain, Raoul Guerin and Poulbot, of which he was elected president.