# Monsieur Boileau at the Café

**Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec** (French, 1864–1901)  
1893  
oil and tempera with charcoal on millboard  
Sheet: 80.3 x 65 cm (31 5/8 x 25 9/16 in.)

Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.1409. [The museum's record](https://clevelandart.org/art/1925.1409).

## About this work

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.

_Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art._

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this in 1893, aged 29. It is now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

### How it was made

- **Tempera.** Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.
- **Oil paint.** Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
- **Charcoal.** Burnt willow or vine. It smudges and wipes away easily, which made it the natural tool for working out a composition.

### [Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec)

French, 1864–1901; born in Albi; died in Saint-André-du-Bois

Toulouse-Lautrec came from an aristocratic family in Albi; after two leg fractures in his teens his legs stopped growing, and he turned to art. Trained in Paris under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon, he settled in Montmartre and recorded its dance halls, cabarets, circuses and brothels with quick, incisive line. His colour lithograph posters for the Moulin Rouge and its performers transformed the street poster. He died at the family’s Château de Malromé at the age of thirty-six.

_Written by Ochre Editions._

## Facts

- Type: Drawing
- Culture: France, 19th century
- The artist was 29
- Real size: about 32 × 26 in (80 × 65 cm). The 20 × 30 in print is close to life size.
- Century: 19th century
- Movement: [Post-Impressionism](https://www.ochreeditions.com/movements/post-impressionism)
- Colour: grey
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/782.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/782/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38; 12 × 16 in $42; 16 × 20 in $56; 18 × 24 in $68; 20 × 30 in $86
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98; 12 × 16 in $108; 16 × 20 in $138; 18 × 24 in $164; 20 × 30 in $208
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58; 11 × 14 in $72; 12 × 16 in $79; 16 × 20 in $98; 18 × 24 in $118
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2; 12 × 16 in $3; 16 × 20 in $3; 18 × 24 in $3; 20 × 30 in $5

Sizes stop where the museum's file would print below 150 pixels per inch. Everything sold is a reproduction, made to order. [Order a print](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/monsieur-boileau-at-the-cafe-cma-173263).