Public Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Prostitutes in 19th-Century Paris

While Mary Cassatt and her contemporaries celebrated the lives of women in the home, other artists turned their gaze to “public women,” the actresses, dancers, bar maids, and prostitutes who constituted the entertainment class of fin-de-siècle Paris. This lecture examines the work of Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who explored the darker side of the feminine ideal.