Café Singer

Café Singer is an oil on canvas painting created in 1879 by the French artist Edgar Degas. This important work belongs to the period of Impressionism, a major art movement flourishing in France during the late 19th century that sought to capture the fleeting moments and visual experiences of modern life.

Unlike many of his contemporaries who concentrated on landscapes, Degas specialized in depicting the private and public entertainment venues of cosmopolitan Paris. The subject of Café Singer stems from the popular café-concerts, or caf’ conc’, which were a ubiquitous form of evening recreation for all social classes in the Belle Époque. Degas consistently documented these spaces, focusing his keen observational skills on the performers, the audience, and the effects of artificial stage lighting.

Executed using oil on canvas, the medium allowed Degas to manipulate color and brushwork to convey the atmosphere of the interior space. Degas was noted for employing dynamic viewpoints, abrupt compositional cropping, and unconventional angles, techniques often influenced by photography and Japanese woodblock prints. This approach aimed to give the viewer the impression of a candid, momentary glimpse into a live performance rather than a formally posed portrait.

Degas’s meticulous documentation of dancers, laundresses, and singers established him as a key figure in modern art, bridging the spontaneity of Impressionism with a deeper interest in psychological states and formal composition. This painting is a testament to the artist’s enduring fascination with movement and urban leisure. Today, this canvas is a highlight of the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. As the work is now in the public domain, high-quality prints and reproductions are frequently accessed by researchers worldwide, cementing Degas’s legacy as a master of the era.