Most artists are not historiographers, and in much art of this time prostitution tended to be a pretext to paint female nudes and bodies, types and characters, rather than a subject matter through which to represent a particular geographical or historical context. There are, however, two important exceptions. In their drawings and paintings of the 1900s, Van Dongen and Chabaud show signs of a real awareness of the realities of sex work and an understanding of the situations created across the social spectrum by the financial transactions involved.