thumb|upright|Jane Avril, c.1892, by Toulouse-Lautrec
Jane Avril (9 June 186817 January 1943) was a French can-can dancer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris and a frequent subject of painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's art. Extremely thin and "given to jerky movements and sudden contortions", she was nicknamed La Mélinite, after an explosive.
Biography
Early life
She was born Jeanne Louise Beaudon on 9June 1868 in Belleville, a neighborhood in the 20th arrondissement of Paris (though her biographer, Jose Shercliff—whose account of the dancer's life is highly romanticised—employed the surname “Richepin” in her publication). Her mother Léontine Clarisse Beaudon was a prostitute who was known as "La Belle Élise," and her father was an Italian aristocrat named Luigi de Font who separated from her mother when Avril was two years old. Avril was raised by her grandparents in the countryside until her mother took her back with the intent of turning her into a prostitute.