Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000297Monsieur Boileau at the Café
About the Artwork
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’ personalities through materials and formal choices.
Inscriptions
inscribed, upper left, in gouache: à mon ami Boileau / HTLautrec [HTL in monogram]
Provenance
after 1893-after 1898: Monsieur Boileau, Paris after 1898-by 1924: Baron Lafaurie, Paris by 1924-by 1925: (Paul Rosenberg, Paris) after 1924-1925: (Wildenstein & Co., New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) 1925-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
French Art Since Eighteen Hundred. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 8-December 8, 1929). Exposition H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, au profit de la Société des Amis du Musée d'Albi. Musée des arts Décoratifs, Paris, France (organizer) (April 9-March 17, 1931). Independent Painters of Nineteenth-Century Paris. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA (organizer) (March 15-April 28, 1935). The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 4, 1936). Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, Drawings, Posters. M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, NY (organizer) (November 15-December 11, 1937). French Impressionists from Manet to Cezanne. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (organizer) (May 3-June 2, 1940). The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941). French Drawings and Watercolors from French Public and Private Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 6-February 15, 1942). 19th and 20th Century French Art and Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Loans. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 22-September 1, 1943). A Loan Exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec. Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY (organizer) (October 23-November 23, 1946). Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (organizer) (March 6-April 20, 1947). Toulouse-Lautrec exposition en l'honneur du cinquantième anniversaire de sa mort. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (organizer). Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, Drawings, Posters and Lithographs. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 20-May 6, 1956). Masterpieces Recalled: Benefit for League for Emotionally Disturbed Children. Rosenberg & Co., New York, NY (organizer) (February 6-March 2, 1957). Toulouse-Lautrec. Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY (February 7-March 14, 1964). Centenaire de Toulouse-Lautrec. Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (organizer). Modern Masters: Manet to Matisse. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (April 9-May 11, 1975); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (May 26-June 23, 1975); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (organizer) (August 4-September 1, 1975). Toulouse-Lautrec. Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (organizer) (co-organizer) (October 8, 1991-January 19, 1992). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000). Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (July 16-October 10, 2005). Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008). Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
- Date
- 1893
- Medium
- oil and tempera with charcoal on millboard
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 80.3 x 65 cm (31 5/8 x 25 9/16 in.); Framed: 105.4 x 89.5 x 8.3 cm (41 1/2 x 35 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection
- Accession no.
- 1925.1409
More by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000297
Powered by Art Trackers