Victorine Meurent

Victorine Meurent (1844- 1927) is best known as the favorite model of Edouard Manet. She also was later in life an artist in her own right. Born into a family of artisans, Meurent started modeling at the age of sixteen. Her name remains forever associated with Manet's masterpieces, Olympia housed in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, The Guitar Singer, owned by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Luncheon on the Grass also at the Musee D’Orsay.

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 painting by Manet in which Meurent appears is, Gare Saint-Lazare, painted in 1873. Three years later, Victorine Meurent first presented work of her own at the Paris Salon and her work was accepted—and, ironically, Manet's own submissions were rejected by the jury that year. 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.

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