The Hangover (Suzanne Valadon)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this work around 1889, showing a woman alone in a venue, her gaze lost and her posture that of someone who has drunk too much. It is also known as The Drinker, and its usual title in English, The Hangover, points to the morning-after state the picture seems to suggest. The scene reflects the bohemian Montmartre of the late 1880s, with its cabarets and marginal nightlife. The model was Suzanne Valadon, a friend and lover of the painter, who had come to his circle after a fall from a circus trapeze at the age of fifteen. Valadon later became one of the first women admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and her relationship with Lautrec shaped much of her early training.

The painting developed gradually. Several preparatory studies preceded the final canvas, along with an ink and chalk drawing published in the magazine Le Courrier français in 1889. Aristide Bruant, singer and owner of the cabaret Le Mirliton, is thought to have influenced the painting's development and perhaps even its title. The work was displayed more or less permanently at Le Mirliton in the late 1880s and early 1890s, linking it to the neighbourhood's artistic circuit.

Technically, Lautrec handles the paint loosely, with a palette that loosely echoes both the colour theory of Neo-Impressionism and the manner of his art school friend Vincent van Gogh. The composition focuses on the figure, with a sketchily rendered background that concentrates attention on her state.

The picture also reads in the light of Lautrec's own life. An aristocrat with a disability probably linked to a genetic disorder, he drank heavily to ease his pain, a habit that, together with syphilis, contributed to his death at thirty-six. The painting now belongs to the Fogg Art Museum, and its first American showing was at the Armory Show of 1913.

Painter

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Date

1889

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

47 × 55 cm

Museum

Fogg Museum, Cambridge

Genre

portrait

Depicts

Suzanne Valadon, hangover

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