Frédéric Bouchot, “Le tapissier” (upholsterer), a print from Frédéric Bouchot’s 12-part series “Debtors and Creditors”, 1844. The caption reads: “A customer who doesn’t let in a creditor who wants to be admitted”.

Featured on PDR in the essay The Art of Making Debts: Accounting for an Obsession in 19th-Century France

Being in debt was once an artful *promenade* — the process of eluding creditors through disguise and deceit. Erika Vause explores a forgotten financial history: the pervasive humor that once accompanied the literature and visual culture of debt.