Prostitution isn’t the only occupation that has been claimed to be the earliest, and that claim wasn’t even made until the late nineteenth century. However, it certainly was one of the most common ways for women to earn a living in the growing cities of Europe during the nineteenth century. Like bars and places of entertainment, prostitution only thrived where there were plenty of potential customers with money. London and Paris were renowned for the number of women who worked as prostitutes, catering for all classes and pockets.

Thoughts of the Past (1859) was the first of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s paintings to be exhibited at the Royal Academy, and remains one of his best-known works. It shows a woman standing by a window looking out onto the River Thames in London, and is a faithful depiction of the studio below that used by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at the time, in Chatham Place.

The woman and her surroundings contain rich clues as to her status: behind her, a gaudy cloak with some white lace hangs. The small dressing table is tatty and covered with cheap, garish jewellery. Potted houseplants straggle up for light from the window, and at their foot is a man’s glove and walking stick. She’s dressed for the bedroom, with her long red hair let down, and looks gaunt, her eyes tired and sunken. The view looks towards Waterloo Bridge, with the Strand embankment to the right, at the time a popular haunt for prostitutes.

In Ford Madox Brown’s Work (1863), the profligate woman in the foreground wears a torn and tattered red dress (detail below), although it’s faded rather than full scarlet. With her gaggle of unruly children and a babe in arms, she’s portrayed as a prostitute.

Like Manet’s notorious Olympia (1863) before, the contemporary surroundings and heap of clothes beside Henri Gervex’s Rolla (1878) ensured it was deemed immoral by the Salon jury. This was inspired by a poem by Alfred de Musset about a prostitute, and Gervex depicted her asleep in bed as her client gets dressed the following morning. In the end, the artist got a commercial gallery to exhibit this painting, where it attracted far more attention than it would have in the Salon.

Jean-Louis Forain’s candid view of endemic prostitution shown in his watercolour The Client (1878) surpassed those of Edgar Degas, and were later to inspire the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901).

One response to the popularity of Naturalism was Félicien Rops’ tender portrait of a low-end prostitute Down and Out in 1882. While she stands next to a sheet on the wall headed TARIF making clear her trade, a single small red flower adorns her flaunted cleavage.

In Antonino Gandolfo’s Compensation from 1880-85, the man settling his bill is only seen by the hand holding out money, and a foot. The young woman holding out her hand to receive, looks away in shame, and wears scarlet to advertise her trade. This is one of a series by Gandolfo depicting the poor in the city of Catania on Sicily.

The theme of prostitution dominates many of the paintings of the Norwegian artist Christian Krohg, who was also an author.

Just before Christmas 1886, Christian Krohg’s first novel Albertine was published by a left-wing publisher. Its central theme is prostitution in Norway at the time, and the police quickly seized all the copies they could find, banning it on the grounds of violating the good morals of the people. Krohg was found guilty of the offence the following March and fined, although the police were only able to seize 439 of the first 1600 copies to go into circulation.

At the same time as he was writing that novel, Krohg had been working on his largest and most complex painting: Albertine in the Police Doctor’s Waiting Room (1885-87). He also painted other scenes from the book.

In the novel, Albertine starts as a poor seamstress, who is mistaken for a prostitute by the police officer in charge of the section controlling prostitutes. He plies her with alcohol then rapes her. She is summoned to be inspected by the police doctor, whose examination further violates her, making her think that she is destined to be a prostitute, and that is, of course, exactly what happens.

Albertine isn’t the prominent woman in the centre looking directly at the viewer: Krohg’s heroine is the simple and humble country girl at the front of the queue to go into the police doctor for inspection. Behind her is a motley line of women from a wide range of situations. At the right, in the corner of the room, is another country girl with flushed cheeks. Others are apparently more advanced in their careers, and stare at Albertine, whose profiled face is barely visible from behind her headscarf. Barring the way to the surgery door, and in control of the proceedings, is a policeman.

During Joaquín Sorolla’s period of Naturalist painting, he depicted the contemporary trade in prostitutes in Spain. His White Slave Trade (1895) is set in a bleak railway compartment, where four young women are asleep while being transported in the care of an older woman. In contrast to their guardian who wears black, the young women are dressed in bright-coloured Valencian regional costumes, and wear fashionable shoes. Their few possessions are stacked on the bench at the right, and include a guitar. The ‘slave trade’ to which the title refers is the movement of prostitutes between brothels, in this case from the city of Valencia to the port of Cartagena, then over to Orán and Algeria.

Aksel Waldemar Johannessen was another Norwegian who took up the cause with Krohg. He had been born in Hammersborg, a poor suburb of Oslo, but his paintings weren’t exhibited until after his death in 1922.

Forced into Prostitution, also known as Night Wanderer, from 1915, shows the artist’s wife Anna in the role of a prostitute in the city of Oslo. Here an odious-looking client with bushy eyebrows and a thick-set face is pressing against her from behind, wanting to pick her up.

In addition to their use for concealment and revelation in paintings, curtains serve other purposes, often as a visual device, or in their everyday roles. They have been widely used through history to provide privacy and separation for sleeping, classically in the four-poster bed.

The right wing of Hieronymus Bosch’s reconstructed Wayfarer triptych shows a frail and emaciated man in bed, being tended to by an angel, with a devil poised above him, and the figure of death coming in through the door. The scene is a barrel-vaulted bedroom which goes deep, and is furnished with a large bed with a canopy and side-curtains. At the foot of the bed is a large chest containing money and valuables. In the foreground, the bedroom ends in a pillar at each side, with a low wall joining them.

The figure of death is shown as a skull on a near-skeletal body and limbs, holding a long silver arrow in its right hand. That arrow points towards the man in bed. Peering over the canopy above the bed is a small devil who holds a lantern on a rod. More devils are seen under the chest, one holding up a document with a red seal on it. Another devil is looking over the frontmost low wall, by the garments laid on it.

Galswintha (540-568 CE), or Galeswintha, was the daughter of the Visigoth king of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and sister of Brunhilda, Queen of Austrasia (Belgium across to Germany). She married King Chilperic I, the Merovingian ruler of Neustria (northern France), in 567. However, marriage didn’t suit Chilperic’s mistress Fredegund, who arranged for Galswintha to be strangled so she could marry the king. That murder caused her sister Brunhilda to make war for forty years against Chilperic, and his murder in 584, possibly by Fredegund.

Jean-Paul Laurens shows Galswintha lying, presumably dead, in a heavily built four-poster bed, its curtains partly drawn back. A young well-dressed woman (presumably Fredegund) views her from the foot of the bed. Fredegund is partly undressed, her right shoulder and much of her back bare, as if she too is just getting ready for bed. Just outside the room, on the other side of a drawn curtain, is a man, who looks in through a gap in that curtain. He is presumably King Chilperic waiting for his mistress to join him, now that he is a widower and free to marry her.

Antoine Wiertz’s Reader of Novels from 1853 is perhaps his most curious painting. A shapely and completely naked woman lies on her back, a book held above her face, reading avidly. Her bed is in a small compartment, a large mirror hanging above her lower body and legs. Her clothing is hung on the foot of the bed, and a floral garland on the top of the mirror. Beside her on the bed are several other books, and the hand of a horned figure is reaching up to those books from below and behind a curtain.

This has all the elements of what later became the ‘problem picture’, a visual riddle which the viewer was invited to solve by building a narrative which fitted the various clues. It could just be dismissing the reading of novels by women as a morally dangerous activity, but it seems too elaborate for that. I wonder if the woman is part of a ‘live peep show’, and passing the time by reading, perhaps, or just a prostitute in her booth in a brothel, although the bed is too small to accommodate a partner. Whatever it meant, it was badly received when exhibited, and deemed pornographic.

At first sight, Moritz Stifter’s The New Dress from 1889 shows a simple scene set in the dressmaker’s. Every face is smiling here, some perhaps a little vacuously, as an affluent young woman tries on a new dress, with its incredibly small waist. Look carefully, though, at the cameo views revealed by its open curtains that are attracting the attention of two of the staff in the background. In one there’s an adult and child apparently watching what can be glimpsed through the window to the right. There is a close-packed crowd who don’t appear to be happy, and perhaps express the artist’s disapproval of events taking place in the dressmaker’s.

Occasionally, the nature and state of curtains can add to the signs shown in the rest of the painting.

Thoughts of the Past (1859) was the first of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s paintings to be exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1859), and remains one of his best-known works. It shows a woman standing by a window that looks out onto the River Thames in London, and is a faithful depiction of the studio below that used by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at the time, at Chatham Place, London.

The woman and her surroundings contain rich clues as to her status: behind her, a gaudy cloak is hanging, with some white lace. The small dressing table is tatty and covered with cheap, garish jewellery and other items. Potted houseplants straggle up for light from the window, and at their foot is a man’s glove and walking stick. She is dressed for the bedroom, her long red hair let down. A short drop of cheap and dirty net curtain is strung across the lower section of the window.

She looks gaunt, her eyes tired and sunken, and stares in quiet sadness at the viewer. The view looks towards Waterloo Bridge, with the Strand embankment to the right, an area that was a popular haunt for prostitutes. Her thoughts are clearly of remorse at her shameful occupation, and her only means of redemption, that of drowning herself in the river.

Around 1920, George Bellows painted more figurative and portrait works, including this Nude with Fan. This wasn’t his first nude, but is remarkable for its richly-lit embedded cameo landscape with marked aerial perspective, that may have been intended to enhance depth. That view is framed by a pair of floral curtains and a blind.

In Jacek Malczewski’s account of the Annunciation, Mary (right) is a modern young woman, whose thimble and scissors rest on a bare wooden table behind. Gabriel is in the midst of breaking the news to her, his hands held together as he speaks. The window and curtains make clear that this is twentieth century Poland, not the Holy Land two millennia ago.

Some of Jan Vermeer’s paintings feature heavy curtains in the foreground, drawn back to reveal his subject behind. Among those is his Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (c 1658), where its railed curtain gives an air of intimacy, suggesting that the viewer is peeping past the curtain and gazing in at real and private life.

I end this collection with another trompe l’oeil, this time for a still life from the Dutch Golden Age.

At that time, painters such as Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts made their speciality the production of trompe l’oeil still lifes. A popular theme was the wall-mounted letter-rack, shown in his Board Partition with Letter Rack and Music Book (1668), with its carefully positioned curtain.

Had there been opinion pollsters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no doubt we would have a good idea of the three most popular reasons for moving from the country to towns and cities. Evidence from paintings isn’t always reliable, and depends on the artist’s opinion. However, there are several good indications that I’ll consider here.

Perhaps the most detailed account appears in the many clues in William Hogarth’s opening image in his series A Harlot’s Progress. Sadly, some may have been lost when his original paintings were destroyed by fire in 1755, forcing us to rely on the engravings made of them.

Moll Hackabout, who is about to start her downfall as a harlot, is dressed in her Sunday best, with a fine bonnet and white dress to signify that she’s an innocent country girl. In Moll’s luggage is a symbolic dead goose, suggesting her death from gullibility. The address on a label attached to the dead goose reads “My lofing cosen in Tems Stret in London” (‘My loving cousin in Thames Street in London’), implying that Moll’s move to London has been arranged through intermediaries, who will have profited from her being trafficked into the hands of Elizabeth Needham, a notorious brothel-keeper and madame.

Hogarth thus presents Moll as a gullible victim of human trafficking to supply country-fresh prostitutes for London. Although he did paint a companion series to A Harlot’s Progress involving a man, he didn’t come from the country, so Hogarth sheds no light on the reasons for men and families moving from the country into cities, a theme that doesn’t appear to have been tackled in well-known paintings.

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s Robin of Modern Times (1860) is a wide-angle composition set in the rolling countryside of southern England, during the summer. The foreground is filled with a young woman, who is asleep on a grassy bank, her legs akimbo. She wears cheap, bright red beads strung on a necklace, and a floral crown fashioned from daisies is in her right hand. She wears a deep blue dress, with a black cape over it, and the white lace of her petticoat appears just above her left knee. On her feet are bright red socks and black working/walking boots. A couple of small birds are by her, one a red-breasted robin, and there are two rosy apples near her face. In the middle distance, behind the woman’s head, white washing hangs to dry in a small copse. A farm labourer is working with horses in a field, and at the right is a distant farmhouse. This most probably refers to the continuing account of how girls and young women from the country around London found their way to the city to become its prostitutes.

There were other more prosaic reasons that younger people migrated. Among them was a long period of harsh weather, the Little Ice Age, that lasted until the late nineteenth century.

Many British winters featured deep and prolonged snow, even in the south of the country, as shown so well in George Morland’s Winter Landscape with Figures from about 1785. This period was hard enough in towns and cities, but many farms and villages in the country remained isolated for weeks at a time. Even when there wasn’t snow on the ground, there were prolonged droughts and widespread crop failure.

Over this period, staple crops were also changing, with the rising popularity of the potato. Just as rural populations were becoming dependent on the potato, they were struck by the mould causing blight, in 1845. Within a year, much of Europe was suffering failure of the potato crop, leading to death from starvation in about one million in the Great Irish Famine, together with fewer deaths in Scotland and the rest of Europe.

Jules Bastien-Lepage shows the autumn harvest in a more successful year in his October: Potato Gatherers from 1878.

Another sustained pressure on those living in the country was the effect of land enclosure from 1500-1900.

John Crome’s Mousehold Heath, Norwich (c 1818-20) shows the low rolling land to the north-east of the city that had remained open heath and common land until the late eighteenth century. By 1810, much of it had been enclosed and ploughed up for agriculture. Crome opposed the enclosure of common land, and here shows the rich flora and free grazing provided. In the right distance some of the newly created farmland is visible as a contrast.

Enclosure concentrated productive land in the hands of those who owned it, and locked out the poorer labourers who had been reliant on common grazing.

While Britain was spared, across much of Europe the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a succession of wars fought largely in the country. Advancing and retreating armies seized what food they could from farms, and often burned and destroyed what they couldn’t remove.

Once Napoleon’s armies had been defeated at Leipzig in 1813, those of the other countries in Europe pursued them into north-east France, where there was a series of smaller battles and skirmishes fought in the French countryside, amid the terrified farmers and their families. Here Horace Vernet shows soldiers fighting around a burning farmhouse, as its occupants try to escape with little more than their lives. Their cattle are panicking, and it appears that the farmer himself has been shot, perhaps when trying to defend his family. A small boy buries his head into his mother’s apron.

As a result of those pressures, whole families abandoned their relatives, often those who were older and less likely to make a successful living in the city, and went to live in the growing towns and cities.

Erik Henningsen’s painted record of Farmers in the Capital from 1887 is one of few contemporary accounts. This family group consists of an older man, the head of household, two younger women, and a young boy. Everyone else is wearing smart leather shoes or boots, but these four are still wearing filthy wooden clogs, with tattered and patched clothing. The two men are carrying a large chest containing the family’s worldly goods, and beside them is their farm dog. The father is speaking to a mounted policeman, presumably asking him for directions to their lodgings.

The large brick building in the background is the second version of Copenhagen’s main railway station, opened in 1864, and replaced by the modern station in 1911. This demonstrates another significant factor in the attraction of people to towns and cities: the spread of railways across Europe.