Its ever-changing nature, which defied easy definition, was an enduring obsession among novelists, poets, playwrights, composers, painters, and sculptors. Most artists in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century addressed the splendor and misery of prostitution, which also became a favourite theme in the emerging art forms of photography and later the cinema. It was in Paris in particular, between the Second Empire and the Belle Epoque, that prostitution became a popular subject for works of art associated with movements as diverse as academic painting, Naturalism, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Expressionism.
The city was undergoing a radical transformation. These often contrasting depictions offer a blend of acute observation and imagination, indiscretion and objectivity, clinical detail and unbridled fantasy. However distinctive they may be, all these perspectives on the world of prostitution were the exclusive preserve of male artists. What emerges from the depiction of pleasure and pain, meteoric social ascents and wretched lives is the burden of being a woman in modern society.
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. In working-class circles, women who had modest jobs — such as manual workers, milliners, florists or laundresses — were too poorly paid to afford decent accommodation or feed themselves adequately, especially if they had a family to support.
Some therefore occasionally resorted to prostitution to supplement their earnings. However, streetwalkers blended into the crowd, detectable only by their words, actions a skirt lifted to reveal a glimpse of ankle boot , contrived poses or eloquent expressions a hint of a smile, a furtive or meaningful look as depicted in the works of Boldini and Valtat. These fluid, intangible identities fascinated artists, who recreated the ambiguous climate of modern Paris in works where their contemporaries recognised the variously encoded allusions to the world of prostitution.
