Courtesans Defining the courtesan Visual representations Courtesans in reality. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , was a French postimpressionist painter, lithographer, and illustrator, who documented the bohemian nightlife of lateth-century Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec is well known for his paintings of prostitutes and courtesans. During the 19th-century it was very difficult to not have a stand on women of ill repute. Almost every man was guilty of using their services at one time or another but that did not always mean that when faced with a question of the profession they would not pick it apart and slander the women.
Lautrec is perhaps one exaplme of a man who was able to stay in the penumbra of the argument and simply put forth, in his paintings, what was there. Henri de Toulous-Lautrec, Jane Avril, for source of both pictures click here.
Jane Avril began her career as a dancer at the Moulin-Rouge in , developing a relatively refined style that contrasted with the vulgar exhibitionism of La Goulue. Unlike Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec did not stand on either side of the divide in his depiction's of courtesans and prostitutes.
He saw them as people and regardless of whether he thought them to be women of ill repute or paragons of virtue fallen upon hard times, he painted them as they were. Not always in a bright light and not always in darkness. Click here to go to: Lautrec frequented the Moulin Rouge and other cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris for more about districts of paris click here. He also frequented the theater, the circus, Parisian brothels and often dance halls along with prostitutes, who mingled among the clientele in search of business.
The dance halls commissioned Lautrec to create advertising posters seen below. After its opening, the Moulin Rouge dance hall reserved a table for Lautrec every night, and displayed his paintings.
