DEGAS, Edgar
(b. 1834, Paris, d. 1917, Paris)

Women at the Terrace of a Café

c. 1877
Pastel, 55 x 72 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

In this painting one looks out from the café onto the boulevard at night, as someone passes by as a dark shadow. Prostitutes sit in the foreground, waiting for customers, with bored resignation and professional patience. Here Degas pushes the painting of interior to its limits. The interior he depicts is no more enclosed and intimate, it is a space open to the outside.