This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay whose exhibition Splendeurs et misères. Images de la prostitution, 1850-1910, explored the same subject earlier this year. You can find a wealth of documentation in English on their website.
What attracted artists to prostitution as a subject? The exhibition ‘Easy Virtue' explores prostitution through the eyes of Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso and many other well-known 19th-century artists.
The depiction of prostitution in French 19th-century art has never been explored in such depth.
During the second half of the 19th century, prostitution was a favourite subject of the visual arts. Artists enthusiastically depicted prostitution as an aspect of modern life in the city of Paris and they painted women soliciting on the boulevards, wealthy courtesans in their salons and the prematurely aged prostitutes in brothels.
Four intriguing themes take you back to Paris in the Belle Époque. Enter the dance halls and cafés where women picked up their customers, as well as the hidden world of brothels and prisons where illegal prostitutes and women with venereal diseases were locked up.
Practical information on the website of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
Langue(s) : English/Dutch