Saloon Style Women Photographs & Images

Though shady ladies weren’t allowed in all saloons, other drinking houses were simply bordellos with a bar and perhaps some other entertainment, such as a piano or dancehall girls. However, even if the saloon didn’t allow them to practice their trade within its confines, the walls would still often be lined with photographs, prints, and beautiful paintings of women like them in some of the more upscale saloons.

By the 1860s, prostitution was a booming business in the Old West. Though it was illegal almost everywhere, it was impossible to suppress. As a result, the law generally did little more than try to confine parlors and brothels to certain districts of the community. Others regularly fined the brothels and painted ladies as a type of taxation. Otherwise, the businesses thrived with little legal intervention.

Shady Ladies were so numerous in some frontier towns that some historians estimate they made up 25% of the population, often outnumbering the “decent” women 25 to 1. As Old West towns grew, they often had several bordellos staffed by four or five women. Usually, painted ladies were between 14 and 30, with an average age of 23.

Some high-class courtesans often demanded as much as $50 from their clients; however, frontier rates generally ranged from $5 at nicer establishments to $1 or less for most ladies of the night. Sometimes, they would split their earnings with the parlor house’s madam. In contrast, others paid a flat fee per night or week.

Last, but certainly not least, were the paintings of nude women that often draped historic saloons’ walls. Paintings of nude women have always been popular, but never more so than they were during the 19th Century, especially hanging over the bar of a saloon filled with rowdy men. While the great artists of Europe painted masterpieces that today hang in museums, hundreds of others copied their styles, techniques, and figures to produce numerous erotic works displaying naked women in lustful poses.

In the lobby of the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona, is a larger-than-life-sized painting entitled Fatima. The original painting is of a woman named Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, who went by Fatima as her stage name. She played the Bird Cage in 1881, and this was a gift from her to the theatre. It has hung in this spot since 1882.

Paintings of harems or a single harem girl were often prevalent in the saloons of the Old West  The ultimate male fantasy, these paintings depicted wealthy Persian dynasties filled with the beautiful women of the royal harem, surrounded by velvets and gold, who were smiling and eager to serve their master  Due to explorers’ writings, American men imagined a harem as a top-of-the-line bordello with half-clad women laying around pools or spas, their bodies oiled, glistening with jewels and rich fabrics  With a pouting smile on their lips, their sole purpose was to please the powerful man for whom they had given themselves for service.