Valmy and Léa
Jean Béraud (French, 1849–1935)
c. 1885–95
- Medium
- brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over graphite
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 36 x 51.7 cm (14 3/16 x 20 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- France, 20th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
A forerunner to the cabaret, the café-concert was an irresistible subject for artists working in fin-de-siècle Paris. Here, the performers are illuminated by the unnatural glow of gas footlights, while the musicians in the orchestra, seen mostly from behind, are tucked in the shadowy foreground. The neck of the double bass extends above the crowd, drawing the viewer’s eye to the climactic cancan.
