Street scene with strollers in front of an illuminated window, Paris

As a young artist based in Prague, Orlik first visited Paris in 1898, where he was struck by the artistic potential of Parisian street life at the turn of the century. In this arresting pastel, a woman holding a hatbox is transfixed—her mouth slightly agape—by a floral display in a brightly-lit shop window. The contrast of the acid, almost fluorescent, greens, yellows, and corals of the shop’s interior and the cool, bluish greys of the dark street cast her in silhouette and render her features barely legible. A top-hatted man immersed in shadow at left leans to get a better view into the shop, as two elegant women exit the scene into the murky gloom at right. Orlik’s drawing thematizes a relatively new form of urban spectacle made possible by the electrification of shop lighting beginning in the 1880s. It also calls attention to the act of looking and the viewer’s own role as a visual consumer.