AiA Art News-service
Courbet's model for the Origin of the
World discovered
It is now “99% certain” that dancer Constance Quéniaux
is depicted in the infamous nude
VICTORIA STAPLEY-BROWN
25th September 2018 16:38 GMT
Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du monde (Origin of the World,
1866)
It is understandably difficult to identify the model behind Gustave
Courbet’s most famous female nude, L’Origine du monde (The
Origin of the World, 1866), since the painting only depicts the
cropped torso of a woman, focussed on her genitals. However,
recent research by the French literary scholar Claude Schopp,
detailed in a book to be released by the Paris-based publisher
Phébus on 4 October, has named the model with near-certainty as
the Opéra ballet dancer Constance Quéniaux, who would have been
34 years old and retired at the time the work was painted,
as
reported by the AFP
.
The painting’s model was previously thought to be Courbet’s lover,
Joanna Hiffernan—which seemed strange, as Hiffernan was a
redhead, and the pubic hair in the picture is dark. Quéniaux,
meanwhile, was noted in contemporary texts as having “beautiful
black eyebrows”. She was also the lover of the Ottoman diplomat
Halil Şerif Pasha (Khalil Bey), who commissioned the painting.
Constance Quéniaux, photographed by Disdéri Photo: BNF /
Department of Prints and Photography
Schopp was going through a letter from Alexandre Dumas, fils to
George Sand dated June 1871 at the Bibliothèque nationale de
France (BNF, National Library of France), which included a line
that had been previously transcribed in English as: “One does not
paint the most delicate and the most sonorous interview of Miss
Queniault (sic) of the Opera.” But after examining the handwriting
in the original letter, Schopp realised the word “interview” was in
fact “interior”.
The head of the BNF’s department of prints, Sylvie Aubenas, tells
the AFP that the evidence “leads me to believe with 99% certainty
that Courbet’s model was Constance Quéniaux”. Another
convincing fact, she says, is that Quéniaux’s will included a
painting by Courbet of camellia
flowers that had an open red
blossom at its centre, which Aubenas believes may have been a gift
from Halil Şerif Pasha. In later life, Quéniaux became a respected
philanthropist, which is why Aubenas believes her association with
the painting was lost over time.