At Grenelle, Absinthe Drinker

Painted in 1886 and now at the Botero Museum in Bogotá, this depiction of an absinthe drinker at a Grenelle establishment belongs to the Naturalist tradition of representing the social costs of the alcohol culture that pervaded working-class Parisian life. Grenelle was a working-class quartier in the 15th arrondissement, south of the Seine — less glamorous than Montmartre. Degas had painted his celebrated L'Absinthe in 1876, and the subject carried resonances of social degradation and urban alienation. Lautrec's own alcoholism was already developing by his mid-twenties, lending these absinthe subjects a certain autobiographical dimension.

The lone drinker's posture of sunken inertia is captured with Lautrec's unsentimental directness — the figure is not glamourised or condemned but simply observed. The pale green of the absinthe glass provides a characteristic chromatic accent against the muted tones of the café interior and the figure's clothing.