Victorine Meurent

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Portrait of Victorine Meurent
Édouard Manet, 1862
Oil on canvas
42.9 × 43.8 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Victorine Louise Meurent (1844-1927) was a French painter and a famous model for painters.

Although she is now best known as the favorite model of Édouard Manet, she also was an artist in her own right, who exhibited repeatedly at the prestigious Paris Salon.

In 1876 her paintings were selected for inclusion at the juried exhibition, when Manet's work was not.

Born into a family of artisans, Meurent started modeling at the age of sixteen. She first worked for Manet in 1862, posing for a painting entitled, The Street Singer. [1]

Her name remains forever associated with Manet's masterpieces, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, which include portraits of her.

Manet continued to use Victorine Meurent as a model until the early 1870s, when she began taking art classes and they became estranged.

The last of painting by Manet in which Meurent appears is, Gare Saint-Lazare, which is often referred to as, The Railway, painted in 1873. [2]. The painting is displayed below. It is considered the best example of Manet's first use of the modern approach to subject matter.

The Railway, by Édouard Manet, c. 1873, is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., his last portrait of Victorine Meurent

Three years later, Victorine Meurent first presented work of her own at the 1876 Paris Salon and her work was accepted—and, ironically, Manet's own submissions were rejected by the jury that year.

the Académie des Beaux-Arts dominated the French art scene in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Académie was the upholder of traditional standards for French painting, both in content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued and landscape and still life were not. The Académie preferred carefully finished images which mirrored reality when examined closely. Color was somber and conservative, and the traces of brush strokes were suppressed, concealing the artist's personality, emotions, and working techniques.

To this day, the Académie holds an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris. Artists whose work is displayed in the show win prizes, garner commissions, and enhance their prestige. The standards of the nineteenth century juries reflected the values of the Académie, as represented by the highly polished works of such artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel.

Meurent's entry in 1879, Bourgeoise de Nuremberg au XVIe siècle, was hung in the same room as the entry by Manet. Work by Meurent also was included in the 1885 and 1904 exhibitions.

Today, most of her paintings and drawings seem to have been lost, as the location of them is not known, and she is said to have died in poverty.