La Sieste

1870s

Life as a trio with the Duluc sisters

Having known Madame Duluc and her young daughters since the 1860s, Rops begins, not long before the break with his wife, to live as a trio with the sisters Aurélie and Léontine, apparently with their mother’s endorsement. They will live together for more than 25 years, until his death: the sisters run the Paris fashion house Maison Duluc, for which he designs logos and advertisements, and the three twice travel to the United States and Canada to present their fashions.

1871–1898

Travels across Europe and North Africa

During his Paris years Rops travels extensively throughout Europe — from capital cities and art centres to salmon fishing in Norway and Sweden and ventures into the Hungarian back country — and also to Spain and North Africa.

1877

A flourishing of fame and income in Paris

Rops thrives among Parisian artists and poets: the demand for his illustrations from publishers and authors of the literary avant-garde is greater than ever, and in 1877 he boasts that he is the best-paid illustrator in France; at the Paris salons, where he often exhibits, the public is both fascinated and shocked by his art and his personal life.

1877

Rops’s name on the frontispiece of the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum”

In the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” (1877) by the British collector of pornography Henry Spencer Ashbee, Rops’s work is featured prominently and his name is advertised on the frontispiece; the reputation of a pornographer attaches to him early.