Aristide Bruant was a successful singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur who ran a cabaret in the Montmartre quarter of Paris.

When he began performing at up-scale café-concerts on the Champs-Élysées, he immediately commissioned Toulouse-Lautrec to market his rough street persona in a manner that would appeal to a bourgeois audience.

Seizing on Bruant's trademark costume of a wide-brimmed hat, cape, and red scarf, Lautrec designed a sparse yet iconic image that promoted both the performer's career as well as his own.