8/13/2023 0 Comments La muse hair salon![]() ![]() Yet Meurent was inducted into the Société des Artistes Français in 1903. Tabarant would have us believe that Meurent became something of a joke in the 1890s-drinking heavily and trying, but failing, to sell her work. Meurent was drawn to the classical Academic style of painting while Manet was instrumental in pushing the Impressionist movement forward, even if he preferred not to identify as an Impressionist and distanced himself from the movement. We also know that she and Manet eventually became estranged-not as the result of romantic drama (as Tabarant asserts) but likely over artistic differences. Musée municipal d'Art et d'Histoire, photo: G.Garitan Meurent wouldn’t have been eligible to enroll at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, as it didn’t accept women, but she was one of the first women to study at the Académie Julian. What is germane to any conversation about Manet’s muse is the fact that she went on to exhibit in the Salon five more times, including in 1879, when her painting Bourgeoise de Nuremberg au XVIe siècle hung in the same room as Manet’s Dans la serre. ![]() ![]() Whether or not Meurent was an artistic prodigy is irrelevant. Just one year later, Meurent submitted her first work to the Académie des Beaux-Arts and it was accepted into the annual Salon-Manet’s submissions were rejected-lending credence to the supposition that she may have studied at Couture’s atelier while modeling for him. In 1875, Meurent began studying with the Parisian painter Étienne Leroy. The real story of Victorine Meurent (which can be told primarily due to the sleuthing of art historian Eunice Lipton and her book Alias Olympia) is far less sordid or tragic than many sources would have us believe and involves a lot more art. Meurent posed for Stevens, Edgar Degas, Norbet Goeneutte, Thomas Couture and Toulouse-Lautrec as a means of supporting herself, in addition to giving lessons in guitar and violin and performing at café-concerts. Manet painted La Partie de Croquet, which features Meurent, in the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens’ garden. More likely, she and he simply shared a social circle populated by artists and other people of culture. There is, however, no real evidence supporting the notion that the two were anything more than colleagues and one piece of solid evidence reinforcing the chasteness of their relationship: Manet died of syphilis in 1883 at age 51, while Meurent died years later, at age 83, in 1927, with nothing to indicate syphilis was involved. The other role Meurent plays in the traditional art history narrative is that of not just Manet’s muse but also his lover. in the Costume of an Espada) and possibly also as a mother ( The Railway). ![]() But Manet also painted Meurent as the avid musician she was ( The Guitar Player), as well as in the guise of a matador ( Mademoiselle V. Yes, it is Meurent who gazes out at us unabashedly from Olympia and the equally controversial Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski Manet’s ‘The Luncheon on the Grass’ (1863). Why? Most likely for no other reason than that she was a woman from a working class background who had serious creative aspirations and was willing to-very occasionally-shed her clothes in the service of the art of La Belle Époque. Manet’s biographer, Alphonse Tabarant, even wrongly claimed she died in her early 40s. Who, indeed? Putting aside the absurdity of Claretie’s question-Olympia was a common nom de guerre in brothels-the answer is Victorine Meurent, the model, musician and artist wrongly framed by many art historians as little more than a prostitute with a tragic backstory. ![]()
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