Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (French: "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans") is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.
Prostitution in Impressionist painting
Degas's initial interest in prostitutes, in the years 1876-1890, started with his interest in Edmond de Goncourt's novel "La Fille Elisa" (1877). In 1876-1877, Degas filled a sketchbook with illustrations from de Goncourt's novel depicting scenes of a girl who becomes a prostitute with her soldier lover. Following soon after, Degas began illustrating the monotypes of brothel scenes, drawing the same physical type as the illustrations in his sketchbook. Although Degas drew individual prostitutes in a notebook, his actual monotypes were entire brothel scenes. 
Several scholars have tried to identify a literary source of Degas' fifty-some brothel monotypes, but none have found a direct connection. However, there have been parallels to Huysman's "Marthe, histoire d'une fille" (1876), and in Émile Zola's "Nana" (1880). Although the prostitution themes of the novels and of Degas' monotypes have similarities, there is a difference between the treatment of the subject; while Degas' prostitutes are "earthy, ugly creatures", the novelists tend to depict their prostitutes as more "heroic and noble".