Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000309About the Artwork
Café-concerts were popular places of entertainment for the middle classes in Paris during the late 1800s and usually featured singers or other forms of vaudeville entertainers. Georges Seurat created eight drawings depicting café-concerts, some showing known establishments. This drawing has an innovative viewpoint, in which we peer through the bowler hats of male viewers listening to a female singer on stage. Seurat typically used a black crayon manufactured by the Conté company, and its waxy quality allowed him to exploit the texture of paper to striking effect.
Inscriptions
inscribed on verso, at bottom, in blue crayon: G. Seurat / L (?) [upside down]; on verso, right center, in red crayon: 299 [posthumous inventory number]; watermark, upper left: MICHALLET
Provenance
1888-1891: Studio of the artist [1859-1891], Paris by 1926: (Galerie Hessel, Paris) after 1926-by 1937: (Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Galleries, New York, NY) after 1937-by 1944: (Buchholz Gallery, New York, NY) by 1944-1958: Alexander Bing [1879-1959], New York, NY 1958: (César de Hauke, Paris, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1958-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Aspects of Drawing. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 10-April 2, 1961). 19th and 20th Century Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 19-March 24, 1965). French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1965-February 16, 1966). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968). Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 31-August 19, 1979). Art and the Stage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 22-August 16, 1981). Paper: The Continuous Thread. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 31-October 24, 1982). National Schools of Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 14-September 18, 1983). Georges Seurat: Zeichnungen. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, D-33602 Bielefeld, Germany (organizer) (October 30-December 25, 1983); Kunsthaus Zürich, CH-8024 Zürich, Switzerland (March 27-May 15, 1984). Treasures on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 10-July 24, 1988). Georges Seurat, 1859-1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (September 24, 1991-January 12, 1992). French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). Georges Seurat: The Drawings. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (organizer) (October 23, 2007-January 7, 2008). Seurat’s Circus Sideshow. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (February 17-May 29, 2017). Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891)
- Date
- 1887–88
- Medium
- conté crayon heightened with white chalk on cream handmade modern laid paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 31.4 x 23.6 cm (12 3/8 x 9 5/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Accession no.
- 1958.344
More by Georges Seurat in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000309
Powered by Art Trackers