The Absinthe Drinker
c. 1890
Medium
Etching in color heightened with graphite, on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Plate: 40.6 × 32 cm (16 × 12 5/8 in.); Sheet: 42.2 × 33.6 cm (16 5/8 × 13 1/4 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
6567
Art Historical Context
In the dimly lit world of fin-de-siècle Paris,The Absinthe Drinker* by-Emmanuel Bertrand (c. 1890) captures the era's fascination with bohemian excess and urban melancholy. This evocative print depicts a solitary figure immersed in the ritual of absinthe consumption—a pale green liqueur synonymous with artistic circles, writers like Baudelaire, and painters such as Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, who explored its themes decades earlier. By the 1890s, absinthe had become a cultural icon of decadence, often linked to hallucinations and social decline, reflecting broader anxieties about modernity ...