L'Origine du Monde, an 1866 painting by French artist Gustave Courbet, has been controversial since it debuted. To be blunt, it depicts a nude woman’s private parts and torso. Even today the painting is considered risque. Facebook recently shut down a French teacher’s account when they posted a picture of the painting. Which is why this post does not contain it – you’ll have to go to the linked article to see.
The reason L'Origine du Monde is in the news now? The woman it depicts may have been identified. Or re-discovered, to be more accurate. Constance Queniaux had retired as a ballet dancer at the Paris Opera in 1859. She was known at the time to be the mistress of Turkish-Egyptian diplomat Halil Sherif Pasha. The man who commissioned Courbet’s painting. But all this has been known for a long time, it is not news.
But further evidence recently turned up in letters between the writer George Sand and the son of writer Alexandre Dumas. Of all things. You’ll have to go to the article to get the specific wording, but basically, Dumas was gently criticizing the painting and in the process, he delicately alluded to Ms. Queniaux’s privates. Dumas therefore had seen the painting, and believed for whatever reason that it was of Constance Queniaux.
That’s not the only new evidence. When Ms. Queniaux died in 1908, she bequeathed a painting by Courbet of a bouquet of spring flowers and red and white camellias. Camellias were the flowers most closely identified with courtesans. And they would have made sense, if a painting for Ms. Queniaux was commissioned from Courbet by his Ottoman patron, to have painted those specific flowers. It all goes together neatly.
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