Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 81 x 147 cm.
Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Prostitution was a major theme of French writers and artists throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Literary interest in prostitution peaked in the years around 1880. Edmond de Goncourt published La Fille Elisa in 1877, and Emile Zola Nana in 1879-80. Guy de Maupassant made his reputation with Boule de Suif in 1880 and followed it up the next year with the endearing La Maison Tellier. Degas’ references to the Parisian traffic in female flesh were often scrupulously discreet – a glimpse of a gentleman’s black trousers amongst the scenery of the opera, or of the gaudy plumage of a courtesan’s hat at the race-course as her carriage passes from view. Sometimes it is no more than a pervasively suggestive atmosphere that would nonetheless have been quite perceptible to men of Degas’ class and tastes.