Armand Rassenfosse painted this work in Paris, where he, shortly after the War returned, in the hope of finding new publishers for his engravings.
Before the War he worked for the Société des Cents Bibliophiles and illustrated for them Les fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire.
The nightlife, at that time in the French Capital, probably was, to say it with an eufemism, rather exhuberant.
at the Folies Bergères it was custom to give a daily show of wrestling women, a circustradition, that in a certain way still dominated the showbizz at that time.
La Goulue, the famous French-cancan danser, imortalised by Toulouse l’Autrec, was also a lion tamer.
Armand Rassenfosse who together with Félicien Rops, surely were inspired by this Parisian nightlife in which they regularly dived.
Likely so many other artist in Paris shared this inspiration. Kees Van Dongen painted his Lutteuses du bal Tabarin in 1908 and Aristide Malliol made a sculpture of two naked wresting women in 1900.
The erotic character of wrestling woman surely musn’t have eluded the citizen of that time
After the first World War, Sports are becoming more and more popular, such as boxing and wrestling.
The post-war woman emancipates herself, wears shorter skirts that give more freedom of movement and cuts her hair short, smokes cigarettes and behaves more and more like a man.
The women, who kept the economy going while their men fought at the front, are now also standing up for their rights.
It is also a time when the politically fighting woman comes to the fore, just think of the UFSF (Union française pour le suffrage des femmes),
founded in 1909.

In a way, this picture is perhaps a metaphor for the struggling woman who had to wait for universal suffrage in France until 1944…