Historical context
Aimé de Lemud (French, 1816–1887) was a lithographer and printmaker who worked in Paris between roughly 1840 and 1875. He produced this small domestic scene — a man and a woman drinking coffee at home — around 1840, both designing and printing it himself. The Rijksmuseum impression is bound into the International Fine Print Fair register (IFF après 1800, 21).
The image belongs to the post-Restoration genre register: domestic interiors, small figures, attention to the everyday objects on the table. Coffee in France by 1840 had moved from the salons of the 18th century into the bourgeois household; this is what that transition looked like on the wall.
Technically this is a lithograph — a single drawn stone, printed in black or near-black ink. The Rijksmuseum impression carries the collector’s mark Lugt 2140 (front, blind-stamp) and Lugt 2228a (back, ink-stamp), placing the sheet in the Carlier-Pinasseau collection before it entered the Rijks.
The file is a 5436 × 4256 px scan from the Rijksmuseum’s open-access program. At native scale it prints at 18 × 14 inches; it carries cleanly to 20 × 16 inches. The small original was made to be read close; the larger sizes are decisions about wall presence rather than fidelity.
Catalog
| Artist | Aimé de Lemud French, 1816–1887 |
|---|---|
| Title | Man and Woman Drinking Coffee |
| Year | c. 1840 |
| Medium | Lithograph |
| Original size | ≈ 22 × 16 cm |
| Holding | Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-P-OB-40.642) |
| License | Public Domain |
| Archive № | CA-011 |
Print specifications
Reads like a small framed drawing on a shelf. Warm-cream mat, slim oak frame.
The size at which the figures and the table read as a single composition. Generous mat (5–6 cm), dark walnut frame.
Pushable for a feature wall; at this scale the lithographic granulation becomes a textural element rather than a transparent medium.
Source statement
Digital source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, open-access program (RP-P-OB-40.642). Public Domain.
Original work: Aimé de Lemud (1816–1887), Man and Woman Drinking Coffee / Man en vrouw drinken koffie, lithograph (own design and own printmaking), c. 1840. Rijksmuseum RP-P-OB-40.642.
Restoration notes. Conservative paper-tone preservation; collector’s blind-stamp and verso ink-stamp preserved in the file. No retouching applied to the printed image.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.