After the opera (‘La sortie de l’opéra’)

This drawing from 1778 relates to a print illustrating volume 23 of a publication titled Monument du costume (fig.; for the publication, see V.I. Carlson in Regency to Empire. French Printmaking, 1715-1814, exhib. cat., Baltimore Museum of Art, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1984-1985, nos. 85a-85b, ill.). The drawing was first engraved in the early 1780s as a separate print, before being published as part of the Monument. The publication illustrates French fashion and aristocratic values under the Ancien Régime and included twenty-six images, twenty-four of which are by Moreau. The artist worked between the late 1770s and early 1780s to complete the series.

The present drawing was sold from the collection of Gertrude Laughlin Chanler in 1959, together with other drawings by Moreau le Jeune, including five other sheets for the Monument du costume. Two of these are now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1974.356.48, 1975.356.49; see J. Bean, with L. Turčić, 15th-18th Century French Dawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, nos. 40, 41, ill.).