1874, Ernest Duez, Splendor -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the museum label:
Salon 1874, no. 644
Splendor offers another interpretation of la Parisienne. It contains cues that many viewers at the Salon would have understood immediately. This woman's heavy makeup and knowing expression would have marked her as a courtesan, an independent sex worker whose affluent clientele affords her the means to acquire an expensive wardrobe. The painting stoked anxieties about the sex trade in the early years of the Third Republic.
1874, Ernest Duez, Splendor -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the museum label:
Salon 1874, no. 644
Splendor offers another interpretation of la Parisienne. It contains cues that many viewers at the Salon would have understood immediately. This woman's heavy makeup and knowing expression would have marked her as a courtesan, an independent sex worker whose affluent clientele affords her the means to acquire an expensive wardrobe. The painting stoked anxieties about the sex trade in the early years of the Third Republic.