A cheap substitute for tapestries, they came of age in the 19th century when paper could be made in long rolls and colour printing had improved.
Degas
Laundresses who collect clothes and linen from homes, launder and press them, and return them for a pittance. Seamstresses working long hours with an uncertain future.
Fashionable hats and milliners by Georges Clairin, Edgar Degas, Jean Béraud, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot and Henri Gervex.
The evils of absinthe in paintings by Degas, Raffaëlli, Jean Béraud, and other booze like Bocks by Manet and Friant, with artists also drinking heavily.
Stairs to fall down, to sit in disgrace, or pose with your sibling? Stairs winding up and defying gravity, bearing ballet dancers, or in a Gothic prison.
Paintings by Edgar Degas, John Brett, Alfred Hunt, Giuseppe De Nittis, Marià Fortuny, Renoir, Joseph Stella, and others.
One of the most private areas in a house or apartment, shown here by Degas, Maximilien Luce, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Eric Ravilious and others.
From 1859, he established himself as a detailed realist, and painted scenes from Goethe’s Faust. They were followed by the return of the prodigal sone and more.
The interiors of an artist’s studio, realistic or fantastic, those of the Netherlands a century earlier, a cotton office in New Orleans, and more.
Middle class collectors came to like paintings of interiors, sometimes without any figures at all. Others were Orientalist, or told open-ended narrative.
The Eclectic Light Company 