Edgar Degas, a born and bred Parisian, frequented the popular circuses, café-concerts, and cabarets of the city in addition to the more refined spaces of the ballet and opera. Here, the site is Les Ambassadeurs, one of the most popular café-concerts on the Champs-Elysées, and the performer is Emma Valadon, known by the stage name Thérésa. Born in the French countryside, Thérésa moved to Paris, worked as an apprentice dressmaker, and began performing at age sixteen. She soon became a star, possessed of what Degas described as “the grossest, the most delicate, the most wittily tender voice imaginable.” His studies of the performer coincided with some of his greatest technical innovations.
This composition began with the monotype technique, in which an ink design is transferred from a metal surface to a piece of paper, akin to printmaking but producing a single impression. Degas then added gouache and pastel over the monotype to complete the image. He enlarged the initial composition with two additional pieces of paper: a large sheet beneath the print that extends above, left, and below, and a separate strip added at the far left. Under the harsh artificial glow of gas lamps, Thérésa sings before a crowd of cavorting and caricatured men and women. Whites, reds, and pinks are interspersed with mustard yellows, grays, and browns to delineate the singer’s complexion and costume as she is caught open-mouthed performing a whimsical song that required her to impersonate a dog. In this utterly unique and experimental work, Degas conjures the raucous joy of Parisian entertainment during the Second Empire.
Leah Lehmbeck
2016/2024
