Sleepless Night (1893): Art, History and Details

Sleepless Night (1893) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec experimented with the recently invented technique of lithography. In addition to fine art prints, he often created ephemera, including posters and sheet music—such as this example. It was commissioned as a cover illustration for Nuit Blanche, a poem by Jean Goudezki that was set to music composed by Désiré Dihau, a well-known bassoonist.

Object facts

• Title: Sleepless Night
• Date: 1893
• Creator attribution: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
• Culture: France
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph
• Dimensions: Image: 25.7 x 17.3 cm (10 1/8 x 6 13/16 in.); Sheet: 32.4 x 24.8 cm (12 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2023.145

A detail from the museum

Désiré Dihau, who composed the music for which Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created this cover illustration, was the artist’s cousin.

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. Terence D. Isakov & Joyce Isakov

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wittrock, Wolfgang, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Catherine E. Kuehn. Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Prints. London: For Sotheby's Publications by P. Wilson Publishers, 1985.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.