1882
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Madame Cardinal (The Conversation) for "La Famille Cardinal" by Ludovic Halévy is a 1882 by Edgar Degas, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a man in a top hat leaning toward a woman in a dark dress, whispering in a dimly lit room. Degas made this as a quick ink print—like a sketch on metal—meant to illustrate a funny, sharp story about ballet girls and their pushy mother in Paris. The room feels hushed, almost secret, because the light barely touches their faces. To see how Degas used light and shadow like this, look up *chiaroscuro*.
This print comes from a series of more than 30 monotypes that Degas planned as illustrations for La Famille Cardinal by the artist’s friend Ludovic Halévy. The satirical stories revolve around two young dancers at the Opéra, Pauline and Virginie Cardinal, and their procuress mother. In late 19th-century Paris, the ballet was the profession of lower-class girls and young women who were available for sexual hire. Here, in the opening scene, Halévy, the first-person narrator, meets with Madame Cardinal in the coulisses (wings) of the Opéra to arrange for a private rendezvous with one of her…
Ludovic Halévy once co-authored a play, La Cigale , in which one of the characters was clearly based on Edgar Degas.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on 19 July 1834 in Paris, Edgar Degas came from an affluent banking family with aristocratic roots and spent his childhood among the cultivated circles of the French capital.
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