Café-Chantant in the Nes in Amsterdam

The Nes was a narrow street off Amsterdam's Dam square that filled after dark with theatres and music halls. A café-chantant was a café where singers and variety acts performed while people drank and talked, and Israëls painted the inside of one here around 1893. This was exactly his kind of subject. He went after the passing life of the city, in its shopping streets, coffee houses and music cafés rather than in the studio, working loosely and fast. In this canvas the light comes off the stage and the gas lamps, and the crowd is caught mid-evening, some watching the act, some turned to each other. The Nes was among the busiest entertainment streets in the country in the 1890s, packed most nights with people out for the singing.