Artwork Page for The Laundress

Details / Information for The Laundress

The Laundress

1888

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

(French, 1864–1901)
Culture
France, 19th century
Medium
black and gray wash with white paint, scratched away in places, on gray cardboard prepared with white ground
Support
Gray cardboard prepared with a white ground
Measurements
Sheet: 75.9 x 63.1 cm (29 7/8 x 24 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Hanna Fund 1952.113
Catalogue raisonné
Dortu D3.029
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print
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Did You Know?

To create this drawing, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted a board white and then both scraped the material away in areas and drew with black ink to create a variety of tones throughout the image.

Description

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.
A piece of vertically oriented cardboard painted white and drawn on with black and gray ink depicts a person in baggy white clothes, hair in a bun, crossing the street with a basket on their left arm. They look forward, walking to our left. Behind them, the back of one horse and carriage pulls away, while, on our left another horse and carriage faces us, the horse's mouth covered with a sack. Wavy lines suggest other people, trees, and buildings.

The Laundress

1888

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

(French, 1864–1901)
France, 19th century

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