51. Edgar Chahine, Young Woman in a Café

It is often the case that, compared to the native inhabitants, immigrants dig more deeply into the culture of their adopted home. Edgar Chahine, who moved to France in 1895 after spending his formative years in Constantinople (now Istanbul), loved Paris and surveyed it from top to bottom. Like his French-born contemporary Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, he was fascinated by the leisurely pursuits of the modern city. He got to know performers at the cabarets and nightclubs and featured some in his art, such as Jane Avril (fig. 1).¹

Chahine was also drawn to ordinary people living out parts of their lives in public. Unlike Lautrec, he did not stylize or caricature his models; instead, he tried to capture their spirit, often through scrupulously detailed observation. Charcoal and chalk in hand, he sat in cabarets and other watering holes, quickly recording his impressions of anonymous young women, sometimes in provocative poses. The subject of Young Woman in a Café, perhaps a shopgirl and perhaps sensing that she was being observed, has just looked up from her reading. (Cafés provided newspapers for customers to peruse while nursing their coffee.) The woman’s modest but fashionable attire reinforces her unguarded look. Her off-kilter hat evokes the relaxed, see-and-be-seen atmosphere that drew people to Parisian cafés in great numbers starting in the middle of the nineteenth century.

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