Prostitution in Impressionist painting
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"History does not tell of a single courtesan, however fêted in her heyday, who died rich. Pregnancy was a constant risk, as was disease. If a courtesan bore a female child, and the child was pretty, she would be introduced to the life as soon as her mother grew too old to attract the best-heeled clientele, and her mother would act as her doorkeeper. Behind the glimmering images of the great courtesans lay the reality of the hundreds of thousands of women who would sell sexual favours if they could, wenches who would do the deed for a dish of coals or a mutton chop." --"Artists have always glamorised prostitution. Manet savaged all their delusions", Germaine Greer, 2011, see Prostitution in Impressionist painting |
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Prostitution was a very widespread phenomenon in nineteenth-century Paris and became a common subject in the art of the period. As an accepted practice among the nineteenth century bourgeoisie, prostitution was nevertheless a topic that remained largely taboo in polite society. As a result, Impressionist works depicting the prostitute often became the subject of scandal, and particularly venomous criticism. Some works showed her with considerable sympathy, while others attempted to impart an agency to her; likewise some work showed high-class courtesans, and others prostitutes awaiting clients on the streets. In addition to the sexual revulsion/attraction the figure of the prostitute stirred, she functioned as a sign of modernity, a clear sign of the entanglement of sex, class, power and money.
"Prostitution, now hidden in the shadows, was for these painters a fact of modernity, and while they drew inspiration from women of the night, they also at times imagined the distance between the studio and the brothel was not so great. Charles Baudelaire, in his early intimate journals, made the equation explicit: 'What is art? Prostitution.'".
