The Laundress

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.

Provenance

Roger Marx [1859–1913], Paris (?-1914); (his sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, May 11–12, 1914, no. 222, sold to Simon Oppenheimer) (1914); (Simon Oppenheimer, Germany, sold to Otto Gerstenberg, Berlin) (After 1914); Otto Gerstenberg [1848–1935], Berlin, by descent to Margarethe Scharf, Berlin (1914-1935); Margarethe Scharf [1889–1961], Berlin (1935-1936); Deposited in Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (1936-1950); (Jean-Pierre Durand-Matthiesen, Geneva) (1951-1952); (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (1952); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1952-)

The Laundress

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1888

Accession Number

1952.113

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.)

Classification

Drawing

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

Gift of the Hanna Fund