A Drunken Man Standing
Medium
Black chalk
Dimensions
sheet: 18 9/16 x 12 15/16 in. (47.1 x 32.9 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Guy Wildenstein Gift, 2008
Accession Number
2009.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Aleksandr Orlovsky’s “A Drunken Man Standing” (1822) offers a candid glimpse into early nineteenth-century genre drawing. Working in black chalk on a sheet just under nineteen by thirteen inches, Orlovsky records the unsteady posture and slack features of an ordinary man, using soft hatching and fluid contours to suggest both physical weight and momentary disorientation. The medium’s rich tonal range allows subtle gradations that bring the figure to life without color, highlighting the artist’s economical yet expressive technique. Orlovsky, a Russian artist active across Poland and Russia, fr...