Gatti's Hungerford Palace of Varieties. Second Turn of Katie Lawrence

c. 1888

Oil on canvas, 38.7 × 47 cm. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

A singer in a pale dress stands alone in the footlights, under a gilded arch hung with red. The crowd below sits in shadow.

Degas and Manet had made the café-concert a worthy subject in Paris, and the young painter knew Degas. Here that city theme moves to a London variety stage.
He first showed at the New English Art Club with a picture of this act, and critics called the subject vulgar.
Look at the man in a bow tie in the front row, facing out while the rest watch the stage.
He sketched in the halls almost nightly, and paintings like this grew from those sketches.
Yale acquired it through the Mary Gertrude Abbey Fund.

The singer was a popular star of the halls, later known for making Daisy Bell a hit. Her name survives mostly through his pictures of her.