LACMA

ShopMembershipMyLACMATickets
LACMA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
info@lacma.org
(323) 857-6000
Sign up to receive emails
Subscribe
© Museum Associates 2025
  • About LACMA
  • Jobs
  • Building LACMA
  • Host An Event
  • Unframed
  • Press
  • FAQs
  • Log in to MyLACMA
  • Privacy Policy
© Museum Associates 2025
Collections

Edgar Degas
At the Café-Concert: The Song of the Dogcirca 1876-1877

On view:
Geffen Galleries, The A. Jerrold Perenchio Collection of Impressionist and Modern Art
Pastel and oil painting of a red-haired woman in a yellow dress performing at an outdoor café-concert, with glowing globe lamps and a crowd behind her
Artist or Maker
Edgar Degas
France, Paris, 1834-1917
Title
At the Café-Concert: The Song of the Dog
Date Made
circa 1876-1877
Medium
Gouache, pastel, and monotype on joined paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 22 5/8 × 17 7/8 in. (57.5 × 45.4 cm) Frame: 30 5/8 × 26 1/8 × 2 1/2 in. (77.79 × 66.36 × 6.35 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of A. Jerrold Perenchio
Accession Number
M.2025.64.2
Classification
Drawings
Collecting Area
European Painting and Sculpture
Curatorial Notes

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

Selected Bibliography
  • Lehmbeck, Leah, ed. Impressionist and Modern Art: The A. Jerrold Perenchio Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2016.
Copyright
photo © Fredrik Nilsen

Related Unframed

50 Gifts for 50 Years
50 Gifts for 50 Years
  • August 31, 2015
  • Roberto Ayala
This Weekend at LACMA
This Weekend at LACMA
  • April 24, 2015
  • Roberto Ayala