This outstanding suite of thirteen monochrome etchings with remarques represents Courbouleix at the height of his technical powers, and stands as perhaps the finest of his unrecorded productions. Executed in the same period as his colour suites for La Maison Philibert and Scenes des maisons d’illusion, the portfolio shares their consummate command of texture – the lustrous rendering of skin, satin and heavy drapery is remarkable — while, and the monochrome medium lends the work a documentary sobriety entirely appropriate to its subject.

The setting throughout is unmistakably the French maison close of the late 1920s – the bar, the salon de présentation, the staircase, the bedroom, the card table – all observed with the eye of someone thoroughly familiar with these establishments. The women are portrayed with an unusual dignity and individuality; these are not generic types but distinct personalities, idle, watchful, bored, amused, entirely at ease in their world.

The remarques, the smaller drawings at the foot of each plate, serve as intimate footnotes to the main compositions.