France, 19th century / 1893
Monsieur Boileau at the Café
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Monsieur Boileau at the Café as drawing (France, 19th century · 1893).
The green drink on the table is probably absinthe, a popular drink with artists at the time that was thought to have hallucinogenic properties.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this drawing as oil and tempera with charcoal on millboard and credits Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901).
The museum's collection notes: Cleveland’s 1925 purchase of this work by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec marked the first acquisition of one of the artist’s drawings by a museum in the United States. Its subject, Monsieur Boileau, was a gossip columnist known to drink heavily at Le Mirliton, a nightclub. Here, saturated, acidic tones evoke the room’s gas lamps and thinned oil paint absorbs into its support, producing texture that complements the scene’s grittiness. In his own time, Toulouse-Lautrec was considered a portraitist for such depictions of friends and other inhabitants of his neighborhood. He preferred drawing for its immediacy, using it to record his sitters’ personal
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtMonsieur Boileau at the CaféOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.