Valmy and Léa (c. 1885–95): Art, History and Details

Valmy and Léa (c. 1885–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean Béraud (French, 1849–1935).

The work and its context

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

A forerunner to the cabaret, the café-concert was an irresistible subject for artists working in fin-de-siècle Paris. Here, the performers are illuminated by the unnatural glow of gas footlights, while the musicians in the orchestra, seen mostly from behind, are tucked in the shadowy foreground. The neck of the double bass extends above the crowd, drawing the viewer’s eye to the climactic cancan.

Object facts

• Title: Valmy and Léa
• Date: c. 1885–95
• Creator attribution: Jean Béraud (French, 1849–1935)
• Culture: France, 20th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 36 x 51.7 cm (14 3/16 x 20 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.407

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Breitman, Ellen. Art and the Stage. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981.
• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Thomson, Richard. "The Imperatives of Style: Seurat's Drawings, 1886-1891." In Georges Seurat: The Drawings, edited by Jodi Hauptmann. Exh. Cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2007.

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.