Getty Museum
Sketches of Café Singers
Creator
Edgar DegasFrench Photographer · 1834–1917
All works by this person →> No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament . . . I know nothing. > > --Edgar Germaine Hilaire Degas From a wealthy Parisian family, Degas devoted himself exclusively to painting without needing to sell a canvas. His training was conventional: he spent five years in Italy, studied the O
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1877
- Medium
- Drawing
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In the 1800s, when people depended on gaslight to light their homes, many artists put down their brushes at dusk and spent the late afternoon and evening in the many cafés around Paris. They gathered around marble-topped tables to discuss ideas with their friends or to watch the singers who arrived to entertain them. Edgar Degas quickly sketched two café singers with sharply pointed noses and haughty profiles, bowing magnanimously to their invisible audiences. A quick flurry of strokes creates the billowing fabric of their dresses, and a circle suggests the unfinished upswept hair of the left singer. "Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas?" one hostess unwisely asked the artist. "Because, madam, women in general are ugly," he growled. Such a remark was more an example of Degas's famously quick temper than of his actual beliefs. Nonetheless, he never missed an opportunity to produce sharp caricatures of either friends or strangers.
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