Music fills the gaslit cabaret. On stage the dancers whirl around kicking up their lace, feathers and legs like marionettes. A small bearded man sits in the far corner of the crowded club staring at the stage intently through thin-framed eyeglasses. He drinks and sketches all night long as though obsessed by some imminent deadline. The audience shows up in his drawings almost as often as the dancers.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec got his inspiration not from mountain peaks and brimming streams but from bars, brothels and music halls of 19th-century Paris, the center of pleasure for the Western world. Toulouse-Lautrec's art was about capturing the ecstasy of those moments on canvas.

Like a documentary filmmaker, Toulouse-Lautrec captured clear-cut moments of Parisian nightlife including the places he frequented, the people he knew and the lifestyle he relished.

Toulouse-Lautrec attended the Moulin Rouge so often he had a table permanently reserved for him. Dancers, singers, prostitutes, sideshow characters and the intimate moments of the Parisian club scene became Toulouse-Lautrec's work and play. His prostitutes are portrayed tenderly. His dancers candidly. He painted real people with real lives.

"His figure was becoming legend," wrote boyhood friend Maurice Joyant, "always at the same place in order to have the same angle of vision." During the day the artist retreated to the quiet of his studio and worked.

The result from 1880 to Toulouse-Lautrec's death in 1901 at the age of 36 was some 737 oil paintings, 275 watercolors, about 368 prints and posters and around 5,084 drawings. It doesn't include the prolific painter's lost works.

In 1891 Charles Zidler, the manager of the Moulin Rouge ordered an advertising poster from Toulouse-Lautrec that expressed the passion of dancing. The title was Moulin Rouge, La Goulue.

La Goulue was the high-kicking dancer pictured at the center of the poster. Her act included kicking off the top hat of an audience spectator. The nearly 6-foot-high poster was printed on three sheets of paper. It appeared all over Paris and was the beginning of Toulouse-Lautrec's lithography career. He quickly mastered the medium.

One of the artist's favorite models was a redheaded friend named Jane Avril. She was a cancan dancer who specialized in splits and "military salutes" where she held one leg over her head.

In his 1893 poster of Avril dancing, Toulouse-Lautrec depicts his model truthfully. She's not full of smiles and bubbly like you might expect but sad and seemingly tired as she must have been doing what she did night after night.

"I have tried to depict the true and not the ideal ... I paint things as they are. I don't comment," he said about his approach.

The poster, titled La Goulue, sold on May 3 at Poster Auctions International sale in New York City for $86,250.

Nowadays, Toulouse-Lautrec's large, vintage stone lithographic posters sell for $25,000 on up. His simple and abstract designs were inspired by his fascination with Japanese woodblock prints.

The color and texture in them is matchless. Toulouse-Lautrec's immediacy and straightforwardness went beyond the work of other poster makers of the era. Through his skill, he raised the bar transforming poster art into fine art.

Here are current values for other Toulouse-Lautrec posters sold in the auction.

Rosemary McKittrick has provided information and analysis on thousands of antiques and collectibles sold at auction since her LiveAuctionTalk column started 18 years ago. She received her training in the trenches, as a professional appraiser. Visit her Web site at www.liveauctiontalk.com.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., stepped outside onto the balcony of his Lorraine Motel room in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. He and his associates were about to go to dinner before he would give a speech.

Some 1,300 African-American sanitation workers in Memphis had gone on strike. When the city refused to negotiate, King and other civil rights leaders came to lend support.

Downstairs in the parking lot Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers stood around a white Cadillac. The car's driver yelled out for King to bring a topcoat because of the chill. King glanced down from the balcony and saw Ben Branch, a saxophonist, standing next to Jesse Jackson.

"Ben make sure you play ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand' at the meeting tonight," King said. "Sing it real pretty."