China Rhyming in Paris 2 – Toulouse-Lautrec’s The Clowness Cha-U-Kao

Who exactly was The Clowness Cha-U-Kao who featured in Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1895 painting of the same name?  Well, it seems Cha-U-Kao was a dancer and performer at Paris’s Nouveau Cirque and then the Moulin Rouge. Her Japanese sounding name originated from a phonetic transcription of the French ChaHut, a combination of the words for a more acrobatic version of the Can-Can and the French for chaos. It was a dance at which she excelled and the crowd went wild when she came on stage. She brought the skills of the circus to the cabaret and Toulouse-Lautrec obviously loved her.

Here’s a rather saucy shot of Cha-U-Kao and a headdress of possibly Indo-Chinoiserie inspiration