Getty Museum

Brothel Scene

Creator

French Photographer · 1834–1917

Artist

> 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

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Object Description · Getty Museum

Stretching across two pages of his notebook, Edgar Degas sketched the interior of a brothel. While one soldier leans back in a drunken stupor, his head against the wall and legs extended, another soldier leans forward in deep discussion with a prostitute at another table. The establishment's madam watches the scene closely from a doorway on the right. Even in this quickly sketched scene, Degas draws the viewer into the drama by creating shrewdly observed characters. Fascinated by the countless gestures that revealed each individual's class and work, he produced pictures from things no painter had fully used before. Here the interlocking eyes of the prostitute and her client fill the center of the scene, contrasting with the madam's languid stare and the other soldier's relaxed position. Degas based the scene on Edmond de Goncourt's novel *La Fille Elisa* (The Girl Elisa), published in March 1877. It tells the tragic story of a girl who becomes a prostitute, first in the country and then in a poor quarter of Paris near the École Militaire. She later falls in love with a soldier and murders him.

Getty Museum’s catalogue record

produced_by.carried_out_by[0].id: https://data.getty.edu/museum/collection/person/8b37c957-95e3-4a45-b819-50e0bcc226d8
Artist/Maker: Edgar Degas
subject_of[Homepage].id: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/108E1A
Date: about 1877
Culture: French
Object Type: Drawing

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Object ID: c7653bf5-1006-490c-86ac-9eade80b9f3a
Object Type: Drawing
Getty Museum field “Object Type” · copied as is
Creator: Edgar Degas
Getty Museum field “Artist/Maker” · copied as is
Culture: French
Getty Museum field “Culture” · copied as is
Department: Drawings
Getty Museum field “Department” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Getty's classification category is stored as department.
Credit Line: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Getty Museum field “Standard Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
Getty Museum field “Source Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
Date: about 1877
Getty Museum field “Date” · copied as is
Begin Year: 1877
Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.begin_of_the_begin” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year: 1877
Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.end_of_the_end” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

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