« Splendeurs et Misères », Images of prostitution from 1850 to 1910 had to be another blockbuster. I had read a lot about it. Many of the paintings I knew, had not represented prostitutes for me, but more jaunty young ladies. I was certainly wrong. There was no queue when I arrived at opening hours at Orsay. That cannot be said for inside the exhibition nor outside when I left. The crowds were horrendous. I managed to go back and forwards from one room to another. Perhaps it was not the best way to follow such and exhibition which was after all done by themes, but at least paintings could be looked at easily or relatively so.
The verb “to prostitute oneself” literally means “to display or to expose oneself publicly” so it is hardly surprising to see that the worlds of art and prostitution are somehow linked in the 19th and early 20th century imagination. The metamorphosis of the body of the prostitute – “an object of public pleasure” – into a work of art to be viewed by all was effected through the artifices of seduction.
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| Giovanni Boldini - " En traversant la rue" 1873-75 |
Prostitution in the 19th century adopted many guises: girls working illegally on wasteland in the dead of night, filles "en carte" (registered prostitutes) and filles "insoumises" (unregistered girls) soliciting in public places, verseuses (waitresses) employed in brasseries à femmes, brothel girls, and courtesans playing host to their admirers in luxurious townhouses.
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| Edouard Manet -"La Prune" -1878 |
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| Albert Guillaume -"Le Vieux Marcheur" pour Gil Blas - 1891 |
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| P. Renouard "La Bourse" pour Paris Illustré - 1895 |
In the second half of the 19th century, respectable women, occasional, illegal, and officially registered prostitutes were virtually indistinguishable from each other when they mingled in public places. An air of ambiguity prevailed during daylight hours, when all forms of overt soliciting were prohibited. This lack of differentiation made it difficult to define what constituted prostitution and to pinpoint its boundaries. This is when I still wasn’t too sure who was who…but it didn’t matter. Girls were finally going to bars, smoking cigarettes, but they didn’t all have to be prostitutes - I hoped.
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| Jean-Louis Forain - "Au jardin de Paris" 1884 |
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| Toulouse-Lautrec - "Au Moulin Rouge" -1892-95: He is there leaving the picture - top left |
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| Edgar Degas - "L'Absinthe" - 1875-76 |
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| Vincent Van Gogh - "Agostini Segatori" - 1887: His lady friend |
Whether they were common prostitutes or prominent courtesans, the “ladies of the night” knew how to show off their assets to their best advantage by exploiting artificial light, as can be seen in works by Anquetin, Béraud and Steinlen. They deliberately chose to stand near a light source and capitalized on the “magical brightness of gas lamps” or shafts of “harsh light” which accentuated their painted features in the dark. This overt display for the benefit of passers-by raised the profile of prostitution at night, contrasting with its discreet presence during the day.
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| Louis Anquetin- "Femme sur les Champs Elysées la Nuit" 0891 |
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec- "Woman pulling up her stocking" 1893-94: THE painter of these ladies |
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| Felicien Rops " La Chanson de Chérubin" 1878-81 |
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| Toulouse-Lautrec "La Partie de cartes" 1893 | : Waiting |
Kept women – demi-mondaines, grandes horizontales or cocottes– at the top of the prostitution pyramid were the focus of special surveillance. This is demonstrated by the "Livre des courtisanes", a register kept by the vice squad in which it carefully recorded the mercenary and illegal relationships of the “divas of up-market prostitution”, including names we know in France such as Jeanne de Tourbay, Blanche d’Antigny, Hortense Schneider, Marguerite Bellanger and Sarah Bernhardt, and their clientele.
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| (Part of) Melle de Lancey by Charles Carolus-Duran in 1876 |
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| Alice Ozy by EEAMAURY-Duval 1852 |
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| Main stairway in La Paiva' Private hotel | | |
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"ROLLA" - Henri Gervex - 1878 - et le pauvre homme s'est suicidée - not a cent left....
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Henry Gervex : Mme Valtesse de la Bigne 1879 une courtisane
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| Jean Béreaud - "Les Belles de Nuit" -1905 |
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Jean Béraud - "Proposition - rue Chateaubriand" - 1900
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| Edouard Manet "Olympia" - 1863 |
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Edouard Manet -"Deux jambes avec bottines sous une jupe rouge" -1880
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Brothel girls underwent regular medical checks to avoid any risk of infecting clients with venereal diseases. Their bodies were subjected to constant and scrupulous attention and this impeccable cleanliness was believed to have a preventative effect.
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| Edouard Manet - "Nana" -1877 |
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| Felix Vallotton - "Femmes à leur toilette" - 1897 |
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| Félicien Rops "La Douche périnéale" 1878 |
Then there was Dirty Bertie, Prince of Wales or King Edward VII, who commissioned a fauteuil d’amour – essentially a stirruped “mount” chair – for his own personal use at the Paris Belle Epoque bagnio Le Chabanais. The chair earned quick notoriety, not only because of the sheer sexual activity of its obese master, but because of the reputed usage it got after his “reign”; it has been highly speculated that it was used by Fatty Arbuckle and Hermann Goring, both unhealthily large men who made innumerable visits to the fancy brothel in the 1920’s through 40’s. It is certainly something to look at.
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| Fauteuil d'Edouard Vll at Chababais |
Faces, which were often painted with naive vulgarity, became akin to masks and the identity of the models, who were increasingly depicted alone, seemed to dissolve, superseded by a search for form which accentuated their features and rendered them geometrical.
From the way I was seeing it, prostitutes looked like prostitutes in the early 20th century where as before, from what I saw , was very ambiguous. Picasso with his « Demoiselles d’Avignon » was hardly kind to the girl’s facial features, but then most of the artists seemed to find vulgarity rather than something much more feminine.
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| P.P. "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" -1907 |
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| Edvard Munch - "Christmas in the brothel" 1903-04 |
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| André Derain " Woman in a chemise or dancer" 1900's? |
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| Louis Anquetin - "Portrait de Femme" -1891 |
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| Frantisek Kupka -"La Môme à Gallien" 1909-10 |
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| Frantisek Kupka - "Le Travail Jaune", 1906 |
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Gustave-Adolf Mossa -"Elle" 1905. A strange work full od symbolism. The peverted Femme Fatale
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| André Derain "Les Filles" - 1905 | | | | |
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| Anonyme - "Femme au corset" - 1900 |
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