Who is That Woman? Manet & Meurent
Detail of " Olympia " by Edouard Manet, 1863, in Musée d'Orsay Victorine Meurent is Manet’s most frequent model of his early career. She shocked audiences as the indifferent courtesan in Olympia (above), exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1864. A year earlier, Victorine had scandalized Parisians, playing the part of a shameless woman who disrobed during a midday picnic. That was her role in Manet's rev olutionary p ainting, Le d éj e uner sur l ' herbe ( The Luncheon on the Grass-- see on bottom) exhibit ed at the Salon des Refusées for the officially rejected paintings of that year. She is just the matter-of-fact figur e that Manet wanted, and there is nothing beautiful, sexual or erotic in either image. In both paintings, she is not an individual but the object, the sexual object. Manet also painted Victorine as Young Lady ( also c alled Woman with a Parrot ), in 1866. She looks taller in her long pink gown. There's a magnificent unpeeled