Chapter Three
FEMALE LABOUR &
Prostitution in Paris
CONTENTS
Introduction
3.1
Framing the Female Figure: Debauchery and Decorum in 19th-Century Art
3.2
Avant-Garde Painters and the Subject of Prostitution
3.3
3.4
Anonymity, Identity and the Parisian Prostitute
3.5
Female Spectacle:
Photography, Theatre and the French Courtesan
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
The Travails and Tragedies of the Ordinary Prostitute
3.9
Covert Prostitution: Shopgirls and Serveuses
3.10
The Paris Opéra: “The Brothel of France”
INTRODUCTION
The painters of modernity were driven to find their subjects in the everyday world that surrounded them, exploring sites ranging from bourgeois leisure spaces to the brothels and bars of the city. Central to their artistic endeavor was the commitment to observe and depict their world without conventional filters. Given this approach, it is not surprising that female prostitutes, who were becoming increasingly visible in the social landscape of Paris during that period, featured prominently as subjects in their works. The avant-garde artists of the time sought to capture the raw and unfiltered aspects of contemporary urban life, and the presence of prostitutes became a poignant and often controversial element in their portrayals.
In the rebuilt Paris, spaces of bourgeois entertainment and social exchange created new opportunities for prostitutes, who quickly became a visible part of the everyday fabric of the city. They conducted business in cafés, concert halls, theatres, and brasseries, eventually becoming associated with the very idea of urban modernity.
Avant-garde representations of women in nineteenth-century French art and literature rapidly reflected this new social reality, and artists who were ambitious to express their era elevated courtesans to bonafide subjects in their works.
Richard Thomson Watson Gordon, curator of Splendor and Misery: Images of Prostitution 1850-1910 (Musée d’Orsay, 2015-2016), explains:
Every major [male] artist at the time tackled the subject of prostitution in one way or another…It was a subject that interested them. Why? The obvious answer is that they were men, but another reason was that prostitution was linked to the idea of modernity. People had moved to the city, which was in itself a new concept, where the moral strictures of the village had disappeared. The city was fluid, and this excited the artists.
Prostitutes ranged from filles en carte (registered prostitutes), filles insoumises, unregistered girls soliciting in public places, verseuses, women working as waitresses in brasseries à femmes, and courtesans, the kept mistresses of the wealthy elite. Although prostitution was considered morally wrong, it was tolerated as a societal necessity.
This chapter will explore the evolving depictions of the female prostitute by avant-garde artists, including Courbet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Tissot, and Seurat. It will analyze their diverse thematic and stylistic approaches, considering how the app