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Edgar Degas executed many paintings, drawings,and pastels of the café concert, a popular French entertainment that featured women singing with an orchestra. During the performance many women appeared on stage together, including seasoned professionals and newcomers to the stage, some awaiting their turn to sing, others simply hoping to attract the attention of the male patrons. The café concert (like the ballet) drew the majority of its performers from the lower classes. The entertainment was bawdy, the lyrics laced with suggestive humor and earthy gestures. Degas’ contemporaries attended the café concert both for the performance and in search of female companionship. Direct communication between audience and performers was forbidden, so the women developed a complex system of gestures and postures to indicate their intentions. A fan was held opened or closed or the display of a bouquet assumed symbolic importance. An American who had visited a Parisian café concert wrote in 1870, “The establishment does not provide these [bouquets]—they are gifts of the admirers of the artistes. A person wishing to make the acquaintance of one of these fair demoiselles sends a bouquet with his card to her. If she appears with it on the stage she thereby signifies her willingness to accept Monsieur’s attentions.” The nightclub represented is the popular Les Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Elysées, identified by the fluted columns by the stage. The conductor is possibly Charles Malo, and the singer Victorine Demay, who appears in many of Degas’ works. The artist barely individualized most of the performers, who are treated as little more than generic types... - Laura Coyle and Eric Denker, Curator of European Art and Curator of Prints and Drawings Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online :: View more Prints and Drawings
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, Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online
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