Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Madame Cardinal (The Conversation) for "La Famille Cardinal" by Ludovic Halévy (c. 1880–83): Art, History and Details

Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Madame Cardinal (The Conversation) for "La Famille Cardinal" by Ludovic Halévy (c. 1880–83) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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 daughters. The dancers, whose sexual availability is the subtext of the composition, are conspicuously absent.

Object facts

• Title: Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Madame Cardinal (The Conversation) for "La Famille Cardinal" by Ludovic Halévy
• Date: c. 1880–83
• Creator attribution: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: monotype
• Dimensions: Platemark: 21.3 x 16 cm (8 3/8 x 6 5/16 in.); Sheet: 25.5 x 17.8 cm (10 1/16 x 7 in.)
• Collection: PR - Monotype
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1967.167

A detail from the museum

Ludovic Halévy once co-authored a play, La Cigale, in which one of the characters was clearly based on Edgar Degas.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of Henry Sayles Francis

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (December 1967): 302–346.
• Lockhart, Anne I. “Three Monotypes by Edgar Degas.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 9 (November 1977): 299–306.
• Pickvance, Ronald. Degas 1879. Exh. Cat. Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1979.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.