Manet's Model: The Story Behind a Famous Face

By Google Arts & Culture

Street Singer (about 1862) by Edouard ManetMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston

During the 1860s Edouard Manet was inspired by the sight of a woman with a guitar emerging from a disreputable café. The female musician refused to pose for the picture, so Manet employed a woman named Victorine Meurent (1844-1927). She happened to be a guitarist and singer, so was well-suited to model for a painting of this subject.

Meurent, only 18 years of age at the time, would become the central figure in many of Manet's greatest and most famous paintings.

Victorine Meurent (about 1862) by Edouard ManetMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston

Meurent emerged as Manet's favorite model during the 1860s and early 1870s, posing for works including his renowned Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass , both in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

This portrait is thought to be Manet's first portrait of Victorine from about 1862.

Young Lady in 1866 (1866) by Édouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)The Metropolitan Museum of Art

She is also depicted in Manet's large-scale paintings which include the curious Young Lady in 1866 in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Railway (1873) by Edouard ManetNational Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Six years later Manet featured Meurent once again for a contemporary, out-of-doors scene The Railway set at the famous Gare Saint–Lazare in Paris, although the station itself is all but obscured from view by the figures, the railway steam, and the iron fence. In this composition, Meurent's appears well-dressed, and comfortably balancing a puppy, open book and fan on her lap. According to the curators at the National Gallery of Art, the child model was "the daughter of a fellow painter who allowed Manet to use his garden to create The Railway."

The differences in the figures' age, dress, body language and even their relationship to each other adds an air of mystery to the painting. Curious too, is the immediacy of Meurant direct glance which seems to have shifted a moment earlier from her book directly towards us, the viewer.

This was last work by Manet in which Meurent appears. Apparently, they fell out over her desire to become an artist in her own right. The talented and ambitious Meurent had begun pursuing her studies to Manet's disappointment. She later led a successful career as a painter. Sadly, almost none of her work exists today. A single painting, only recently discovered, hangs in the Musée municipal d'Art et d'Histoire de Colombes [Colombes History Museum] in France.

Credits: Story

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
Google apps