Il caffè-concerto agli Ambasciatori

Degas made this pastel in 1876 and showed it in 1877 at the third Impressionist exhibition. It puts you down in the dark of the orchestra pit, looking past the necks of the instruments and the musicians to a singer in a red dress, lit hard from below by the footlights. The cafe-concert was a Parisian night out, an open-air cafe where singers performed for a drinking, chattering crowd, and the whole scene here runs on gaslight, a soft, low, yellowish light that Degas catches in the glow on the singer's throat and arms. He drew it in pastel worked over a printed monotype, a method that let him build the shimmer of that artificial light up in layers.