The show attracted little initial attention and sold poorly, as it portrayed a sympathetic depiction of prostitutes undergoing their everyday routine devoid of eroticism.
He was open about his predilection for prostitutes, feeling more at home among them than in aristocratic society where he was treated as an outcast due to his disability of being short-statured.
Biographer Julia Frey writes that Lautrec, "became, in a sense, one of the family to the women in the brothels, a friend and confidant, eating meals with them, getting to know their problems, participating in their gossip, observing them in their various occupations and pleasures."
Lautrec was said to have sympathized with the women in the brothels and humanized their depiction as prostitutes, showing them undergoing their everyday routines.
[5] The Cleveland Museum of Art exhibited selections from the series in 1986 (Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th-Century Paris) and in 2013 (Prints by Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard).