This painting, Monsieur Boileau by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was completed in 1893, and belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Its location surprises me a little since that is not necessarily what comes to mind when I think of modern art. I tend to picture an image with some blobs of paint and then a title of what it was supposed to be. Needless to say, I don't picture the image to be what the title says. This painting, though, definitely looks like it could be Monsieur Boileau.
Regardless of its strange placement, I like this painting. It seems to capture a little moment of daily life in... wherever that is.The only thing that has me concerned is the suspiciously green substance in the glass on the edge of a table. I don't recall seeing a beverage that was that bright a green. On second though, I have, but I doubt they had Starbucks blended tea beverages in the late 1800s.
I also wonder: what are the little black things laying on the table? I wish artists would sometimes label otherwise unidentifiable objects. It would help so much.
That is absinthe, a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage famous for its green color. Absinthe was very popular in France, especially with artists and writers, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Talouse Lautrec is known to have had a fondness for the anise-flavored drink.
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