The painting portrays near its center a group of three men and two women sitting around a table situated on the floor of the cabaret.

In the right foreground, apparently sitting at a different table, is a partial facial view of English dancer May Milton, with painted red lips, her face aglow in a distinctive greenish light and shadow.

The center-left background shows the short-statured Toulouse-Lautrec himself, standing in front of and next to, Dr. Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran.

[1] At the Moulin Rouge is part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was first displayed on December 23, 1930.

[2] Art critic Jonathan Jones calls the painting a masterpiece, and writes "the scene is somehow more exotic and more exciting than any recreation [of the Moulin Rouge, or Montmartre] in popular culture.