Yet the cabaret that most nearly captured the spirit of the Chat Noir (especially the first, less ‘commercial’ Chat Noir) was the Cabaret des Quat’z-Arts at 62, boulevard Clichy. A guidebook writ- ten for tourists visiting the 1900 Exposition described the place as ‘the establishment most typical of the joyous Butte. . . . This is the true cabaret montmartrois, with its clientele composed of painters, artists, and littérateurs.'*" The Quat’z-Arts opened in December 1893 on the site of the old Café du Tambourin, an artists’ hangout where painters (among them Vincent van Gogh) had been able to exchange their canvases for meals.52 The owner, Francois Trombert, had chosen the name to exploit the uproar caused by a nude dancer at the second Bal * In Le Gaulois, § Mar. 1900. 5° La Lame russe, 11 (15 Sept, 1905): 1, In 2 lead article for the next istue (1s Oct), enti- ted "Montmartre redivivas, Bonnand bemoans the commercialisys that led Montmarcre attray, asserting that he and Numa Blés (co-owner of the Lune Rousse) have done their best to apply the principles that had assured the success of the Chat Noir, There is, of course, no hunt here that the Chat Noir itself had succumbed to such commercialism. 5 Mewsy and Depas, Guide de Pétranger & Montmartre, 52-3. This follows a fulsome blurb for the Botte i Furry, as glorious successor to the Chat Noir. The guidebook includes Erik Satic’s tongue-in-cheek appraisal of ‘Musicians on Montmartre’. % Francis Carco, La Belle Epoque au temps de Bnuant (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 108-9; and Herbert, La Chanson & Montmarte, 236, See ako vin Gogh's painting Woman atthe Café du Tambourin (Musée € Orsay)