Art: Fish Shop by Georges-Henri Fauvel

“Fish Shop” by Georges-Henri Fauvel is a tableau of fish workers (poissoniers), who are cleaning fish, making them palatable for sale. The women are in a class below scullery maids, not nearly as well off as sex workers. They worked not far from the types of neighborhoods once stalked by Jack the Ripper. In the foreground only two fish ladies can be seen in their entirety. With heads hung and  hands steady at work, their pallor is as gray as the floor. The rest of the fish ladies are shadowy, unformed, disappearing into the background, where the last vestiges of women are vanishing before our eyes.

French Artist Georges-Henri Fauvel (1861–1930) had a penchant for painting royal dogs, especially hunting dogs. His Fish Shop is a radical departure from his usual repertoire. He was probably paid handsomely by patrons for painting their beloved hounds. What made him paint “Fish Shop” is anyone’s guess. These fish ladies were undoubtedly deemed to be less valuable than dogs.

Fish Ladies are still around. They don’t work in fish shops per se, but they are among a class lower than working-class—the working poor: clerks at Walmart, janitors, chain hotel maids, dishwashers, fruit pickers, and fast-food counter workers. Little has changed since the ashen-faced ladies inhabited the Fish Shop. Today these women are still invisible.

Fish Shop was part of the collection of French Impressionist paintings in the exhibition “Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism” that recently toured the United States. Although the tour is over, perhaps “Fish Shop” will resurface again and rear its scaly head. “Fish Shop” (1881), an oil on canvas, was on loan from Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre.

Fish Shop is an essay in my collection NOTES FROM THE WORKING-CLASS.