Adolphe (The Sad Young Man)
Medium
Crayon lithograph printed in olive green on Japan paper with watermark of Gustave Pellet and Toulouse-Lautrec, from posthumous second edition before 1910; only state
Dimensions
Sheet: 17 3/4 × 11 13/16 in. (45.1 × 30 cm) Image: 10 1/4 × 7 3/16 in. (26 × 18.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1928
Accession Number
28.81.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Adolphe (The Sad Young Man)**, created in 1894 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in collaboration with publisher Gustave Pellet, captures a poignant moment of melancholy. This crayon lithograph, printed in a striking olive green on fine Japan paper, depicts a young man named Adolphe lost in sorrow, his downcast gaze and slumped posture evoking deep emotional isolation. Toulouse-Lautrec, a master of Post-Impressionist printmaking, often portrayed the underbelly of Parisian nightlife in Montmartre, but here he turns to intimate portraiture, highlighting human vulnerability amid the era's bohemian e...
About the Artist
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec|Gustave Pellet · 1864–1901
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa (1864-1901) was a French Post-Impressionist painter, printmaker, and illustrator whose innovative poster designs revolutionized graphic art and advertising in late 19th-century Paris. Born into an aristocratic family at Albi in southern France, Toulouse-Lautrec's privileged lineage traced back to the Counts of Toulouse and extended uninterrupted to th...