Cabaret Singer

In view of the theme, I think this drawing by Nonell was almost certainly done in Paris (1897-1898 or 1899-1900). The subject of women in the world of entertainment, as they were performing, was made fashionable by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec a few years earlier, just as the expedient of showing the light shining from below on the faces and bodies of the figures, as if it were coming from stage footlights, was also his idea. Nonell made the most of that artifice in this drawing.

The strokes of this drawing, energetic and rapid, still have the coarseness of the artist’s early works. For example, the hands are deficiently executed – that said, hands were never Nonell’s strong point, whether in drawing or painting. That is why I do not think that this drawing was done after 1900, a time when the strokes in Nonell’s drawings, as brief and nervous as during his beginning years, if not more so, acquired almost absolute firmness and forcefulness.

The signature is another factor to be borne in mind when dating this work. The artist’s calligraphy, with all the letters written with the same unbroken line, including the I or Y of the initial of his first name, corresponds to the years 1897 and 1898, since after that the artist tended to separate the letters and eliminate any reference to his first name. For all these reasons I believe that this is certainly a work from Nonell’s first stay in Paris.