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

Music Hall Singer

1878-79
Black chalk with white highlights on gray paper, 475 x 310 mm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

This is a preparatory study for a painting in which the woman was not a singer at all, she was a well-known pianist, Alice Desgranges. Degas was not out to convey singing as performance, rather, he was exploring various shock effects produced by so extreme a close-up.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.