Content warning: Painted Nudity
Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866) has been the subject of controversy for 150 years, not only due to its graphic content but the element of mystery which, up until now, has encompassed the work. The painting itself depicts the lower half of a woman’s body, lying naked on the bed with her genitals exposed to the viewer.
The identity of the woman depicted in the painting has remained a mystery…until now.
She has been revealed to be a dancer by the name of Constance Queniaux. The original muse was thought to be Joanna Hifferman, the mistress of James McNeil Whistler. Yet this theory was still speculative as, the important task in being able to confirm the theories of who the mysterious woman could be was to match the hair colour of the women to that shown in the painting (to be crude, the ultimate curtain/drapes question). Therefore, until now the most agreed upon ideas of who the woman was could still be contested due to the fact that her ginger hair did not match the black hair painted by Courbet. There was a theory posited that a long-lost top part of the painting was found by an art buyer, suggesting that the woman’s head had been separated from her lower body, if you look at the woman’s hair colour it seems a plausible theory that she could at least by the same model, however there is still uncertainty as to whether these paintings were even meant to be part of one whole piece of work.
Claude Schopp solved the great identity mystery through his examinations of letters sent to the son of Alexandre Dumas to George Sand who discuss the painting in their correspondence. The shock that they felt towards the painting certainly did not die down with the passage of time.
The work wasn’t even shown in a public exhibition until 1991 and in 2011, Frederic Durand, a teacher, attempted to take Facebook to court over the shutting down of his account after he posted the painting to his profile and it was only in 2015 that Facebook permitted nude artwork to be posted without censorship. According to art historical theory, it could be argued that even if Facebook allowed nude paintings to be posted, Courbet’s work may still not cut the chase.
The debate of the nude vs. the naked is a distinction that goes back centuries in the practice of art history. A nude is usually taken to mean a bare body that is depicted in a dignified manner, demure and almost undermining the starkness of the body as it is clothed in a stylistic virtue. However, if a protagonist is described as naked, this entails chaos, sin and exposing oneself in a manner associated with unruly behaviour. Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1482) for example would be classed as a nude, with Venus posing in a bashful and respectable manner, almost motionless and not using her nudity to enable sexuality.
However, Manet’s Olympia (1863) was considered a naked subject, not only because of her unflattering colour palette and her stark outlines but because her hand was placed strategically over her genital area, with a direct gaze at the viewer, entailing an inviting and sexual look that was not welcome in the realm of the nude.
Courbet’s subject would almost certainly be seen as naked rather than nude, as her almost wildly positioned body in a mess of bedsheets does not connote propriety in any sense of the word. Yet, the lengthy censorship of this painting still seems to be unjust as even if it is not seen by some as ‘tasteful’, art is meant to capture a certain emotion at a certain time and place felt by an artist, no matter what the motive. Even if the wildly sexual nature of the painting makes it an uncomfortable subject to engage with, it is still important for viewers to engage with these matters nonetheless.
One may ask, if this is the case then why does it matter that the identity of the woman was even found? If the painting was made with the intention of simply demonstrating female sexuality in the realm of the naked then the identity of the woman is almost redundant. Yet, it seems almost like a process of commodification to only provide the lower body and nothing else that would be able to tell the viewer who the woman was, turning her into a framed object to be viewed rather than a subject to be interacted with in herself. Therefore, knowing who she was allows us to shed light on her relationship not only with Courbet but the painting and gain a greater understanding of the work beyond simply the controversy that surrounds it.
Images obtained from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_-_Olympia_-_Google_Art_Project_3.jpg
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/celebrity/art/celebrity-birth-venus
https://www.lafacecacheedeloriginedumonde.com/home
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45637037