Conservators have painstakingly restored one of Toulouse Lautrec's most famous works before it goes on public display.

Jane Avril au Jardin de Paris was painted in 1893, depicting the famous cancan dancer who made her name at the Moulin Rouge cabaret.

Lautrec was commissioned to produce posters advertising the Moulin Rouge in 1889.

His posters and portraits soon became synonymous with the hedonistic 'Belle Epoque of the 1890s.

Paper conservator Ann Evans, 58, spent six months painstakingly restoring the poster

which will be featured at an Art Nouveau exhibition in Glasgow.

It was framed by conservator Sophie Kostin, 44, ahead of Kelvingrove museum's exhibition Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty.

Ann said that she has worked on the artwork for around 240 hours.

She said: "I'm never doing it again. It was way too much work."

Before Ann started work on the poster, it was dirty, faded and crumpled.

The paper conservator slowly pieced the fragmented poster back together and dry cleaned it with a vulcanised sponge.

It was then washed in a water bath and backed onto aerolab aluminium honeycomb, a material which is used in aircrafts.

Sophie said: "It was very crinkled before. I don't think that there'll be many left as they would have been pasted over or torn down.

"We decided to have a plain frame because it is a poster so we have gone for something that would distract from the poster.

"We've used a specialised glass in the frame. It's laminated, with two layers and a 99.9 per cent UV protection."

The pair admitted that they had done a test run of framing the famous artwork "just to make sure we weren't going to drop it".

The poster was taken to Kelvingrove on Friday afternoon to be hung in the Mucha exhibition.

Thanks to Lautrec, Jane Avril became a symbol of bohemian Paris.

The iconic poster was made to mark the day that Avril headlined at the Jardin de Paris on the Champs Elysees.

Nicknamed La Melinite after dynamite, she was known for her energetic and erotic routines.

She formed an important part of Lautrec's collection of bohemian Paris - he also painted singers, musicians, cabaret performers and prostitutes.

Lautrec painted Avril several times throughout her life.

Mucha was a contemporary of Lautrec and started his poster career a year after the Jane Avril poster was made.