Le Café-concert aux ambassadeurs
A singer belting out a number under the gaslights of the open-air Café des Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Élysées — the café-concert is gone.
théâtre de la Concorde
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Le Café-concert aux ambassadeurs — at a glance
- Artist
- Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
- Year
- c. 1876–1877
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Place
- The Café des Ambassadeurs, Champs-Élysées gardens, Paris
- Viewpoint
- From within the audience of an open-air café-concert — the venue was cleared in the early 1900s; the site is now open garden
- Medium
- Pastel over monotype
- Dimensions
- c. 37 × 27 cm
- Now at
- Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
Overview
The Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs is a pastel-over-monotype (and related oil) by Edgar Degas of about 1876–77. Seen from among the audience, past the black silhouettes of spectators' heads and the necks of double basses in the pit, a female singer in a red-orange dress stands on the lit stage, arm raised, mouth open, other performers seated behind her; globe gaslights, mirrors, gilding and the greenery of the garden surround her. It is about 37 by 27 cm and hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
Where was Le Café-concert aux ambassadeurs painted?
Scholarship The café-concert was a Parisian institution: an open-air café in a garden where, on a small stage, singers performed popular songs to a paying, drinking crowd. The Café des Ambassadeurs stood in the gardens on the north side of the lower Champs-Élysées, near the Place de la Concorde, with the Café-Concert de l'Horloge nearby. Both were cleared in the early twentieth century; the site is now open garden by the Champs-Élysées. Degas painted the type and this specific venue repeatedly; the place itself no longer exists.
What is in the painting?
In the dark foreground, the backs of audience heads, a fan, and the scrolls and necks of the orchestra's double basses jut up. On the bright stage beyond, the singer in orange throws out an arm and sings; two or three other women in pale dresses sit behind her; a man in the wings. Round globe lamps blaze; mirrors and gilt catch the light; a bower of green leaves frames the top. Colour is high and artificial.
Look closely
The bass necks
The scrolls and necks of the orchestra's double basses jut up into the dark foreground.
The singer in orange
She throws out an arm and sings, modelled hard by the footlights against the dark.
The globe gaslights
Round white lamps blaze around the stage, with mirrors and gilt catching the light.
The bower of leaves
Green garden foliage frames the top — this was an open-air café.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A view from within the audience, the foreground cluttered with heads and instruments, the lit stage seen past them.
Scholarship Degas puts the viewer in a seat: the crop, the intervening heads and the bass necks make the composition feel accidental and immediate, and the harsh footlights model the performer dramatically out of the surrounding dark. It is a study of artificial light and of a very modern Paris entertainment.
History & provenance
The pastel is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; Degas made several related café-concert works now in other collections.
Sources
- Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon — collection entry for Edgar Degas, ‘Le Café-concert des Ambassadeurs’ (c. 1876–77)
- Jean Sutherland Boggs et al., ‘Degas’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988)
Related paintings
Le Chahut
1889
Seurat's café-concert dancers of 1889–90 — the same Paris entertainment, in pointillist theory.
L'Absinthe
1876
Degas in a Paris café of the same years — the ‘overheard’, cropped view.
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
1882
Manet's Paris music-hall of 1882 — the café-concert world at its most famous.
More by Edgar Degas
L'Absinthe
A Cotton Office in New Orleans
Young Spartans Exercising
