Félicien Rops: Question d'Orient

The subject of this etching was first engraved on a silver coffee maker belonging to Dr.Filleau (Ramiro, Catalogue descriptif et analytique de l'œuvre gravé de Félicien Rops, 1893, p.75). Here we see a Parisian woman, a prostitute, with half-bare arms and a fan in her left hand, sits carelessly on a sofa. Her petticoats are rolled up enough to show her legs. She looks rather disdainfully as a middle eastern barefoot person prostrating at her feet who offers her a bundle of annuity securities, on which we read (in reverse) “Turkish Borrowing”.