The Shop Girl

By the 1880s Paris had filled with shops selling ribbon, lace and ready-made dresses, and a new kind of worker stood behind their counters, the young saleswoman who spent long days on her feet. Tissot made her one of a set of 15 canvases he called Women of Paris, each showing a different type of modern Parisian woman. Here she has just wrapped a customer's purchase and holds the shop door open, looking straight out as if you were the one leaving. Through the window the boulevard traffic keeps moving. Another clerk leans into the display at the left, and outside a top-hatted man peers in at the women through the glass.