La vielle Masken, servente anversoise (The Old Woman)

Félicien Joseph Victor Rops

1833–1898

La vielle Masken, servente anversoise (The Old Woman), mid-late 1800s

Where object was made: Belgium

Material/technique: aquatint; wove paper; drypoint

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 121 x 86 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 470 x 298 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 4 3/4 x 3 3/8 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 18 1/2 x 11 3/4 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 x 16 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Letha Churchill Walker Memorial Art Fund

Accession number: 1989.0054

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Printed Art and Social Radicalism," Jun-2002, Stephen Goddard
Notorious for his many erotic and pornographic prints, Félicien Rops also made sensitive etchings of working class people, including several that betray his concern for social ills such as prostitution and syphilis. From Rops’s correspondence we know that the woman in this print represents an aging servant from a house of prostitution. Rops wrote to the editor of the journal that published this print, L’Artiste:
Entering, she smiles softly and in her respectable voice cries into the stairway: “Virginia, this is a man who does not seem debauched!”