This year marks the 80th anniversary of the abolition of the French maisons closes system – also known as maisons de tolérance – the network of officially sanctioned whore houses that sprang up in the early 19th century. It was under Napoleon’s Consulate that the post-revolutionary French state turned its attention to an especially troubling kind of social disorder: prostitution. Rather than one dedicated red-light district, there were brothels all over Paris, the character of each establishment reflecting the atmosphere of its neighbourhood. Such top-of-the-tree brothels were places to see and be seen and where a certain amount of power broking went on. There is something distinctly French about the way the official obsession with controlling prostitution was accompanied by a remarkable efflorescence of art.