i6o himself seems never to have used the word mono- (Mr. Jean, Les Bas-fonds du crime et de la prostitu- Notes type, preferring "dessins faits a 1'encre grasse et tion, Paris, n.d. [ca. 1900], p. 59). This distinction to Pages imprimes." Unlike his pastels and oils of the same was also made by Mace, La Police, pp. 260—61: 27-29 date, which he referred to contemptuously as his "Les pensionnaires, habilles de diverses couleurs, "articles," prints were his "serious experiments," ont la poitrine et les bras nus. Sur le maillot se and monotypes dominated his prints. According to noue le petit jupon court s'arretant a la naissance Degas (Arts Council, p. 8), between 1874 and des jambes. Rebut du centre de Paris et presque 1884, and again in 1890—92, Degas made perhaps toutes se livrant a Pintemperance, ces femmes, 250 monotypes of which over 400 impressions are agees de 30 a 40 ans, guettent Parrivee des clients documented. Over a longer period of time he composes d'ouvriers et de rodeurs. Si, par hasard, made only 66 etchings and lithographs. Boggs et deux ou trois personnes ayant une mise conve- al. (p. 296) argue that "although they are generally nable, se presentent, les lilies, subitement deconte- dated c. 1879—80, the monotypes appear to be- nancees, n'abordent les nouveaux venus qu'apres long to an earlier period, c. 1876—77, and it is y avoir ete invitees par la maitresse de Petablisse- possible that Degas exhibited some of them in ment" (The brothel dwellers, dressed in diverse April 1877." It is important to remember that the colors, have bare chests and arms. Over their brothel monotypes are very small, 4 3/4" X 6 i /4" tights is tied a short petticoat that stops just at the or sometimes 6 1/4" x 8 1/2". top of the legs. These women, between thirty and 2. Clement Greenberg, "On the Role of Nature forty years of age, riffraff from the center of Paris in Modernist Painting" [1949], Art and Culture, and almost all of them indulging in intemperance, Boston, 1961, p. 171. are on the lookout for the customers, all workers 3. Under the (roughly) Greenbergian rubric be- and vagrants. If, by chance, two or three decently long the important early readings of Janis, Mono- dressed people present themselves, the filles, sud- types, Adhemar and Cachin, Degas, and Linda denly embarrassed, don't approach the new arriv- Nochlin, Realism, Baltimore, 1971, pp. 204—06. A als until being invited to do so by the mistress of brilliant synthesis of modernist and deconstruc- the house). tionist viewpoints concerning Degas's dismantling 11. The salons were probably on the first floor of convention is Carol M. Armstrong, "Edgar rather than on the rez-de-chaussee. See Mace, La Degas and the Representation of the Female Police, p. 262. Body," in The Female Body in Western Culture: 12. The middle-ranked house was permitted to Contemporary Perspectives, Susan Rubin Suleiman keep a domestic at the door, and under certain cir- (ed.), Cambridge, Mass., 1986, pp. 223-42. cumstances one of the pensionnaires was allowed 4. Charles Bernheimer, "Degas's Brothels: Voy- to circulate on the street in front of the house. See eurism and Ideology," Representations 20 (Fall "Maitresses de Maison, Obligations Generales," 1987): 172. 1879, and "Prostitution, Maisons de Tolerance," 5. Alain Corbin, Les Filles de noce: Misere sex- n.d., in APP, D/B 407; and Dr. Louis Reuss, La uelle et prostitution aux dix-neuvieme et vingtieme Prostitution au point de vue de Vhygiene et de Fad- siecles, Paris, 1978, chap. 2. ministration en France et a Vetranger, Paris, 1889, 6. Ibid., p. 88. pp. n8ff. 7. Gustave Mace, La Police parisienne: Le Gibier 13. Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar de Saint Lazare, Paris, 1888, p. 264. Degas: A Catalogue of the Thirty-eight Notebooks 8. Ibid., pp. 262 — 64. in the Bibliotheque Nationale and Other Collec- 9. "Ces mercenaires de la prostitution officielle, tions, New York, 1985, vol. i, pp. 129—30; and malgre 1'absence de desirs physiques, sont en con- Reff, "The Artist and the Writer," in Degas: The tact perpetuel avec les homines, et n'ayant que la Artist's Mind, New York, 1976, pp. 172 — 73. joie des autres pour vivre, elles se soumettent a un 14. For a discussion of Goncourt's novel, see my travail absolument mecanique" (ibid., p. 260). Ph.D. dissertation, Susan Hollis Clayson, "Repre- 10. "Contrairement aux etablissements simi- sentations of Prostitution in Early Third Republic laires plus chics ou les femmes ne sont vetues que France," University of California at Los Angeles, d'un peignoir ou d'une chemise, les pensionnaires an 1984, pp. 145 — 54; d Reff, Degas: Artist's Mind, des maisons economiques sont plus habillees" P- 173-