Laure | |
|---|---|
 La Négresse (1862-63) by Édouard Manet | |
| Born | unknown |
| Occupation | Art model |
| Years active | 1859–1867 |
| Known for | Olympia by Édouard Manet |
Laure was an art model in France known for her work with artist Édouard Manet. She is best known for posing as the black maid offering the white nude figure a bouquet of flowers in Manet's 1863 painting Olympia.
Little is known about Laure. She has been described as African or Caribbean and her last name is unknown. Art historian Griselda Pollock suggested that she met the artist Édouard Manet while working as a nursemaid in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Another theory suggests that Jeanne Duval, who was in a relationship with Manet's friend Charles Baudelaire, introduced Manet and Laure. This theory was discussed by Pollock, as well as by Manet archivist Achille Tabarant. [1]
Manet's notebook, included in the 2019 exhibition Le Modèle noir, de Géricault à Matisse at the musee d'Orsay in Paris, recorded her address at 11, rue de Vintimille, 3rd floor, in Paris.
Laure très belle négresse 11 rue de Vintimille 3e
— Édouard Manet, artist's notebook
This was less than a ten-minute walk from Manet's apartment in a neighborhood inhabited by avant-garde artists and writers, as well as a "small but highly visible" black population. [1] This residence was close to Duval, who Baudelaire wrote to at 17 rue Sauffroy. [1]
Laure also appeared in Manet's painting Children in the Tuileries Garden (1861-62). [2] In both Olympia and Children in the Tuileries Garden paintings, Laure is wearing the same outfit of a pink dress with a high white collar and a madras headtie. [3] It is not known whether she was painted by other artists during that period.
In 1862–63, Manet painted a portrait of Laure, La Négresse, which is also known as Portrait of Laure. This painting's subtitle is "une très belle négresse." [4]
Laure has not been widely studied in art history. With a few exceptions, she is presented as "ancillary" or as a part of a larger colonial theme within the painting. [1]
Manet's depictions of Laure are referenced in later works. Artists including Frédéric Bazille, Henri Matisse, and Romare Bearden quoted and referenced the Laure figure. Some artists reference Laure specifically, while others merge Laure and Olympia into one character. Laure is a figure portrayed by many black artists who bring her to the forefront as "a subject in her own right, deserving of subjectivity." [5]
Renee Cox frequently references Laure in her works, combining or switching her and Olympia. Her works that reference Laure and Olympia include the 2001 Olympia's Boyz, which combines the characters, [6] and the 2008 Missy at Home, which art historian Tracey Walters views as a reversal of the Olympia and Laure roles. [5]
Maud Sulter has depicted Laure in many of her works, including her 1989 Phalia (Portrait of Alice Walker) [7] and her 2002 Portrait d’une négresse (Bonny Greer) and Jeanne Duval: A Melodrama. In Jeanne Duval: A Melodrama, Sulter overlay Laure in Olympia with an 1850s Nadar photograph of an unknown black model, who Sulter suggested might be Duval. [1]
Mickalene Thomas frequently references Laure in her work. Her 2012 series Une très belle négresse, which takes its name from the Portrait of Laure subtitle. [8]
Elizabeth Colomba's 2018 painting Laure (Portrait of a Negresse) depicts Laure on her way to Manet's studio. Colomba's painting was included in the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, alongside Manet's paintings of Laure, at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University. [9] This exhibit, curated by Denisse Murrell, placed Laure in the spotlight, which redefined and named black women in art. [5]
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
Events from the year 1868 in art.
Olympia is a 1863 oil painting by Édouard Manet, depicting a nude white woman ("Olympia") lying on a bed being attended to by a black maid. The French government acquired the painting in 1890 after a public subscription organized by Claude Monet. The painting is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Eva Gonzalès was a French Impressionist painter. She was one of the four most notable female Impressionists in the nineteenth century, along with Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Berthe Morisot (1841–95), and Marie Bracquemond (1840–1916).
Victorine-Louise Meurent was a French painter and a model for painters. Although she is best known as the favorite model of Édouard Manet, she was an artist in her own right who regularly exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. In 1876, her paintings were selected for inclusion at the Salon's juried exhibition, when Manet's work was not.
Jeanne Duval was a Haitian-born actress and dancer of mixed French and West African ancestry. For 20 years, she was the muse of French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire. They met in 1842 when Duval left Haiti for France, and the two remained together, albeit stormily, for the next two decades. Duval is said to have been the woman whom Baudelaire loved most in his life after his mother. She was born in Haiti on an unknown date, sometime around 1820.
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
Zacharie Astruc was a French sculptor, painter, poet, and art critic.
La Négresse (1952–53) by Henri Matisse is a gouache découpée, made of cut pieces of colored paper.
Music in the Tuileries is an 1862 oil-on-canvas painting by Édouard Manet. It is owned by the National Gallery, London and the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin as part of the shared Lane Bequest.
The Railway, widely known as Gare Saint-Lazare, is an 1873 painting by Édouard Manet. It is the last painting by Manet of his favourite model, the fellow painter Victorine Meurent, who was also the model for his earlier works Olympia and the Luncheon on the Grass. It was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874, and donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1956.
Self-Portrait with Palette is an 1878–79 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Édouard Manet. This late impressionistic work is one of his two self-portraits. Velasquez's self-portrait in Las Meninas was a particular inspiration for Manet's painting which despite its allusion to the previous artist's work is very modern in its focus upon the personality of the artist and loose paint handling.
Maud Sulter was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer, educator, feminist, cultural historian, and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She began her career as a writer and poet, becoming a visual artist not long afterwards. By the end of 1985 she had shown her artwork in three exhibitions and her first collection of poetry had been published. Sulter was known for her collaborations with other Black feminist scholars and activists, capturing the lives of Black people in Europe. She was a champion of the African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and was fascinated by the Haitian-born French performer Jeanne Duval.
Black Woman with Peonies is a painting by Frédéric Bazille, produced in late spring 1870, a few months before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War which would claim his life. It has been in the Musée Fabre, in Montpellier, since 1918. It is an oil on canvas and its dimensions are 60.3 cm × 75.2 cm.
Bazille's Studio is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1870 by the French Impressionist Frédéric Bazille. The painting is also known as L'Atelier de la rue Condamine, The Studio, and The Studio on the Rue La Condamine. It has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris since 1986. It shows the artist himself surrounded by his friends and paintings in his studio, capturing the artistic and social conditions of Paris in 1870.
Elizabeth Colomba is a French painter of Martinique heritage known for her paintings of black people in historic settings. Her work has been shown at the Gracie Mansion, the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Musée d'Orsay, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Berthe Morisot with a Fan is a painting by French artist Édouard Manet, executed in 1874. It belongs to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris, but since 2000 it is in loan to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille.
La Négresse is an 1862 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, now in the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli in Turin.
Denise Murrell is a curator at large for 19th- and 20th-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She is best known for her 2018 exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, which explored how French Impressionist painters and later artists portrayed black models.
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