She was sixteen, with alabaster, slightly pink skin, a storm of fiery hair and she loved art. She wanted to commune with painting. She even willingly posed for bold nudes and believed that she would be successful in a male-dominated world.
Victorine Meurent was born in Paris in 1844. At the age of sixteen, she began posing for painters from the city of lights. The students of Thomas Couture, whom she served as a model, called her the Shrimp . It wasn't malicious. Rather, it was quite an apt metaphor for the color combination of her hair and skin. Victorine probably met her fate, in the person of Edouard Manet, two years later.
A rebel from a good home
Manet was a wealthy dandy and was considered a rebel. From the beginning of his education with Couture, he challenged all the norms. Instead of obediently and concentratedly painting a man assuming the pose of an ancient gladiator, he made fun of him. As Małgorzata Czyńska, author of the book “The Most Beautiful. Women from Pictures ”:
He asked if he flexed his muscles the same way when he bought a bunch of radishes from a street stall maker.
He didn't listen to his teacher, testing his patience. Once, in Couture's absence, he had persuaded a model to pose for the nude to remain clothed instead. This led Couture, who adhered to the principles of ancient and Renaissance painting, to a passion for shoemakers. He almost threw out a recalcitrant student.
The Master and his muse
Manet and Victorine met in 1862. Their first meeting is still shrouded in mystery today. There are three completely different stories about him, which Małgorzata Czyńska carefully lists.
One of the first effects of the collaboration between Victorine and Manet was the painting "Breakfast on the grass". However, the storm he caused was only a prelude to an avalanche of thunder that fell on both of them later.
According to the first, the painter was supposed to meet the girl at her father's engraving shop. According to the second, Manet fished her out from the crowd in front of the Paris Palace of Justice. The third version seems the most likely of all. Manet, Couture's apprentice, and Victorine, his student model, had to meet in the studio, and when that happened, the aura of scandal stuck to them permanently.
Victorine Meurent was a working girl. Like many self-earning women like her, she was treated by society with a pinch of salt. There was a widespread belief that those girls were unfair that a working woman was less "decent" than that of a family or a man who was constantly dependent.
Hard model life
Victorine posed for artists, although it was not a particularly lucrative or prestigious job. Still - at least in her opinion - always better than spending your entire life at the tub as a washerwoman. Later, when the bohemian had already moved from Montmartre to Montparnasse, three hours of modeling cost five francs.
On the one hand, this amount exceeded the financial capacity of many painters. On the other hand, such a salary did not guarantee a dignified life. Nevertheless, on certain days, a group of volunteers gathered at one of the intersections of the boulevard du Montparnasse. It is not known exactly how much Victorine made by posing for Manet, but she was his favorite model for several years (1862-1874).
Critics devouring Breakfast on the Grass alive
Already one of the first effects of this couple's cooperation aroused indignation among Parisians. In 1862 Manet created the painting "The Street Singer". Initially, he planned to immortalize an authentic singer whom he met on the street on a canvas, but the woman refused to pose.
Palais de l'Industrie, in which, on the order of Napoleon III, works were displayed, rejected by the jury of the Salon, in 1863. Including the famous painting by Manet.
She was replaced by Victorine, dressed as a musician, with a guitar in one hand and a tube full of cherries in the other. As Małgorzata Czyńska, author of the book “The Most Beautiful. Women from Pictures ”:
Critics and the public did not like, however, that the painter took a girl from the social lowlands as his heroine that he showed her character with all realism.
You naked as Venus? All right. Naked you as you? Scandal!
Manet did little of the criticism and continued to paint Victorine. Until 1863 he created the famous "Breakfast on the Grass", which scandalized the public. The critics couldn't believe that one picture could show the total nakedness of a woman next to two fully clothed men .
The exposed charms of the ladies were allowed on condition that they were used in an allegorical image, for example, depicting Venus or the nursing Madonna. The shock caused by the painting resulted in its rejection by the jury of the Salon, i.e. a cyclical large painting exhibition. As Małgorzata Czyńska writes:
This was the year that three-fifths of the five thousand entries were rejected by a panel of judges. The dissatisfaction of painters, for whom the Salon often meant to be or not to be in institutionalized artistic life, turned out to be so great that Emperor Napoleon III ordered all the works to be exhibited.
The Rejected Salon
Among the canvases exhibited thanks to the royal intervention was also "Breakfast on the grass".
Unfortunately for Manet, his painting turned out to be the worst-received work of the entire exhibition.
Dogs were hung on the painter, and his model, whose identity was not a secret, had a completely tarnished opinion.
Whore, this is one of the lightest insults that were then directed at her. The linen itself was also torn off, which scandalized gentlemen… beat them with sticks.
This unlucky exhibition for Manet was called the Salon of Rejected.
The painter, however, did not give up on shocking, and the beautiful Victorine continued to pose for him.
Two years after "Breakfast on the Grass", on the occasion of the Salon, another, even bolder image appeared in the light of day. Posing for "Olympia" Victorine showed everything she could show. She definitely hasn't become a favorite of Parisian art lovers.
"Olympia" is Victorine's most famous portrait. His shadow hung over her all her life.
Małgorzata Czyńska, author of the book “The Most Beautiful. Women from Pictures ”he writes outright:
The image "Olympia" only confirmed her whore's opinion. Nineteenth-century art critics and the public of the time identified Manet's model so strongly with his indecent images that to this day in the common opinion she is considered once a simple girl-girl, an ordinary prostitute, and once a famous Parisian courtesan .
Victorine took over Manet's painting for years.
My name is Victorine, not Olimpia
Victorine Meurent, meanwhile, was not one of them, and she was certainly pained by the slander. She came from the working class, but did not want to become a seamstress or washerwoman.
From the beginning, she was drawn to art. She was probably not only a model of Thomas Couture's students, but also studied with him.
In Manet's paintings he fixes his gaze directly on the viewer. As Adolphe Tabarant, quoted by the authors of the book "Dictionary of Artists' Models", recalls, her face seemed to be austere, but she had beautiful eyes and it was moved by her fresh and curving lips.
Manet's biographers had their own opinion on it, but were unable to work out a common position. Some called her capricious wobbly, others saw her gentleness . Today it is impossible to say what it really was.
She was definitely not just a naked woman in a very unpretentious image. Victorine had a passion for painting, but also a talent . She created many of her own works, of which, unfortunately, only one has survived to this day:"Palm Sunday". Only from the titles and descriptions her works are known, such as "Nuremberg burgher from the 16th century" (1879) or "Self-portrait" (1876).
Victorine disappeared from Manet's studio for a while. The absence, however, was not due to the "divorce" of the muse and the master. For unknown reasons, Miss Meurent set off overseas in the 1870s. She returned to Paris in 1885 and immediately enrolled in an evening course at Rodolphe Julian's private painting school. Additionally, she took lessons from Etienne Leroy.
Singer of Place Pigalle
Victorine's second passion was music. Sometimes she also earned money thanks to her. The famous Pigalle Square in Paris was home to the Café de la Nouvelle Athenes, an iconic bohemian bohemian café. It was here that Victorine played her guitar. When poverty was pressing on her, she wandered around pubs with an organ grinder and a monkey on her shoulder.
Victorine has gained recognition over time. It wasn't easy. First of all, she was a woman, which by the standards of the time gave her a much worse position. Second, it was financially independent. Thirdly and most importantly, the specter of Olympia hung over her all her life and she had to prove that she was not just "the red-haired Manet model who has no qualms about undressing" .
It is known that she exhibited her works several times as part of the Salon (in 1876, 1879, 1885 and 1904). Victorine, although she posed for rebels and pioneers of new trends in painting, had a need for institutional recognition herself. After being nominated in 1903, she became a member of the Association of French Artists.
In 1876, 1879, 1885 and 1904 Victorine, having finally won recognition as a painter, exhibited her works at the Salon. In the painting The Salon from 1880.
Hard-earned recognition in the field of painting did not translate into success in personal life for a long time. At first she was of course accused of having an affair with Manet after all, she did not feel embarrassed while posing naked. Anyway, this rumor was also believed by ... the painter's wife.
Victorine wasn't just a pretty doll in the picture. Although almost nothing has survived from her works, the painting "Palm Sunday" kept in the museum in Colombes proves that she was a talented painter.
It was also believed that she was having an affair with the Belgian academic painter Alfred Stevens, for whom she posed.
A bald alcoholic or a happy artist?
She spent the last decades of her life in Colombes, a suburb of Paris. She lived there with Marie Dufour. This piano teacher was probably Victorine's lover. So it is very possible that Victorine was not only not a lover of painters, but also that she was never sexually attracted to her.
After all, for many, she remained a naked woman forever from a scandalous image.
As Małgorzata Czyńska, author of the book “The Most Beautiful. Women from Pictures ”:
Fascinated by Victorine Henri de Touluse-Lautrec, he simply called her Olympia and painted an elderly woman himself.
Apparently around 1893 he was taking friends to her apartment to introduce them to the worn, balding Olympia.
Is this last anecdote true? Not necessarily. Men who could not believe that a woman could succeed in the art world in the 19th century stubbornly sold the version that Victorine died relatively young as an alcoholic whore.
About the fact that she was a talented painter herself, that she had her own goals, dreams, successes, and probably also a happy autumn of life in the company of a loved one - nobody wanted to remember.