Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000308The Laundress
About the Artwork
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec produced this drawing to illustrate an article about Parisian summers. It presents the type of poorly paid worker who remained in the city while others traveled to escape the urban heat. Because the image was to be reproduced in black and white, Toulouse-Lautrec thinned and brushed ink, scraping into it to expose fine white highlights. Like several artworks in Cleveland’s collection, the drawing was formerly owned by Roger Marx, a French collector, curator, and art critic who built perhaps the most substantial holdings of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work around the turn of the century.
Inscriptions
signed, lower right, in brush and ink and black crayon: T-Lautrec; inscribed, on verso, upper center, in graphite: M
Provenance
?-1914: Roger Marx [1859–1913], Paris 1914: (his sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, May 11–12, 1914, no. 222, sold to Simon Oppenheimer) After 1914: (Simon Oppenheimer, Germany, sold to Otto Gerstenberg, Berlin) 1914-1935: Otto Gerstenberg [1848–1935], Berlin, by descent to Margarethe Scharf, Berlin 1935-1936: Margarethe Scharf [1889–1961], Berlin 1936-1950: Deposited in Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 1951-1952: (Jean-Pierre Durand-Matthiesen, Geneva) 1952: (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1952-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Toulouse-Lautrec: Exhibition Organized in Collaboration with the Albi Museum. Philadelphia Museum of Art (organizer) (October 29-December 11, 1955); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (January 2-February 15, 1956). Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, Drawings, Posters and Lithographs. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 20-May 6, 1956). Art: The International Language. The Cleveland Museum of Art (October 2-November 4, 1956). Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959). French Drawings of the 1800's. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (organizer) (April 22-May 29, 1962). A Generation of Draughtsmen. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (organizer) (April 25-May 29, 1962). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963). Toulouse-Lautrec. Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY (February 7-March 14, 1964). 19th and 20th Century Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 19-March 24, 1965). French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1965-February 16, 1966). Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901. MAK, the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, Austria (organizer). Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. MAK, the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, Austria (June 2-July 31, 1966). The Vocabulary of Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 29-December 31, 1975). Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 31-August 19, 1979). Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario M5T 1G4, Canada (organizer) (January 24-March 22, 1981); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (April 9-June 14, 1981). Northern European Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1982-January 9, 1983). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th-Century Paris. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 14, 2012-January 20, 2013). Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023). Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2023-January 14, 2024).
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
- 1888
- Medium
- black and gray wash with white paint, scratched away in places, on gray cardboard prepared with white ground
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 75.9 x 63.1 cm (29 7/8 x 24 13/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Accession no.
- 1952.113
More by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000308
Powered by Art Trackers