Five Rapid Sketches

Edgar Degas frequently used his sketchbook to work out new ideas for various paintings or lithographs. In this group of five quick sketches, he concentrated on the gestures and expressions of a singer at a café-concert, several of which he later re-used. In the upper left corner, the café singer who leans forward, her mouth open in full song, closely resembles a pastel and lithograph known as Mlle Bécat aux Ambassadeurs. At the lower left, Degas showed another vocalist in profile, reaching out towards an imaginary audience with both her arm and body. This figure appears again in the pastel Le Café Concert des Ambassadeurs. The back of both another singer and a man with a high collar fill the upper right corner, while a woman bows in the lower right corner. A contemporary once described Degas as "an artist of rare intelligence, preoccupied with ideas which seemed strange to the majority of his fellows. Taking advantage of the fact that there was no method and transition in his brain, which was active and always boiling over, they called him the inventor of social chiaroscuro."