Waking Up
Medium
Lithograph printed in drab green on wove paper
Dimensions
Overall: 15 3/4 x 20 7/16in. (40 x 51.9cm) frame: 28 x 22 in. (71.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982
Accession Number
1984.1203.166(5)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec *Waking Up* (1896) captures an intimate moment of a woman stirring from sleep, rendered in a single, moody drab green ink. Created during the artist's prolific period in Paris, this lithograph belongs to his renowned *Elles* series, which depicted the private lives of women—often prostitutes—in Parisian brothels with empathy and unflinching realism. Toulouse-Lautrec, a Post-Impressionist master of the Belle Époque, elevated everyday scenes from Montmartre's bohemian underworld into art, blending observation with psychological depth. Printed on wove paper, the lithogr...
About the Artist
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 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...