She steps out of each painting and comes alive with her own irrepressible voice. Lazare , at 4 rue St. Manet painted here in the s, including the period when Meurent posed for his painting The Railway Did Meurent walk through these very doors as she met with Manet? One of the many things I enjoyed about the novel Victorine was the way Drudge titled many of her chapters after a painting.
Another chapter is named after the painting on the cover above , Mademoiselle V. Or better yet, go see them in person. One thing kept coming back to me as I read this book. Meurent would have been jealous of the opportunities these women had, including the opportunity to befriend and begin painting with Manet. Manet and Meurent might have been friendly, but she was never his equal. It was there she learned the essentials of oil painting — things she could never learn from merely eavesdropping and observing as a model.
Louis School of Fine Arts, where she had been the first female art instructor. Parisians treated Meurent like a prostitute because she had dared to pose like one; Parisians spat and jeered at her in public after Manet exhibited Olympia at the Paris Salon.
However, Meurent was fearless, something upper class women could not dare without damaging their reputation. She continued to exhibit there in various years from Apparently, Meurent lived in the village of Colombes until her death in She outlived Manet by 44 years.
The Parisian Sphinx , upcoming nonfiction by Summer Brennan cover not final. But who was Victorine? What was her connection to Manet? What does her defiant, direct gaze tell us about her? We might never know the true story about Victorine Meurent. Were they lovers, as her nude poses suggest, was she a prostitute, or was it a relationship of collaborators and fellow artists? Quelle surprise, non? Only one painting by Victorine has survived that we know of , a portrait that reveals a great deal of talent.
