Constance Adolphine Quéniaux (9 July 1832 – 7 April 1908) was a dancer and courtesan at the
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet () is a French ballet company that is an integral part of the Paris Opera. It is the oldest national ballet company, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it. It is still regarded a ...
. She is the presumed model for
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...
's painting ''
L'Origine du monde
("The Origin of the World") is a picture painted in oil on canvas by the French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is a close-up view of the vulva and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread.
History Identity of the model
Ar ...
'', in which a woman is seen explicitly displaying her
genitalia
A sex organ (or reproductive organ) is any part of an animal or plant that is involved in sexual reproduction. The reproductive organs together constitute the reproductive system. In animals, the testis in the male, and the ovary in the female, a ...
.
Life and career
Early years
Born on 9 July 1832 at Saint Quentin, Constance Adolphine Quéniaux was the daughter of Marie Catherine Quéniaux. Constance’s mother was unmarried at the time of her birth and she, reportedly, grew up in poverty.
At a young age, Constance joined the ballet corps of the
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet () is a French ballet company that is an integral part of the Paris Opera. It is the oldest national ballet company, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it. It is still regarded a ...
, performing minor roles in its repertoire.
She rose to a secondary soloist position alongside Claudina Couqui, receiving acclaim.
Constance would combine her dance career with prostitution.
In 1859 Constance had suffered from a knee injury that prevented her from ballet,
and by the age of 34, she had officially retired from the Opera and was captivating the favour of an Ottoman diplomat,
Halil Şerif Pasha
Halil Şerif Pasha, transliterated variously as Khalil Sherif Pasha ( sq, Halil Sherif Pasha, 20 June 1831 – 12 January 1879), was an Ottoman-Egyptian statesman, diplomat and art collector, who lived during the Tanzimat period. His colle ...
.
Constance was the model for several works, including the ''Portrait de Mademoiselle Constance Quéniaux, de l'Académie Impériale de Musique'' (1867), by
Jules-Émile Saintin
Jules-Émile Saintin (14 August 1829 – 13 July 1894) was a neoclassic French painter.
Biography
He was born in Lemé (France). Jules Émile Saintin was a pupil of Michel Martin Drolling and François-Édouard Picot at the Ecole des Beaux-Art ...
.
Later life
In the final years of Constance’s life, she became renowned for her philanthropy.
She began to actively support the ''Orphelinat des Arts''—an institution for orphaned or abandoned children of artists.
She died in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
, France, on 7 April 1908, aged 75. In her will, she left a Courbet painting of camellias. This flower, since the publication of
Alexandre Dumas fils
Alexandre Dumas (; 27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) was a French author and playwright, best known for the romantic novel '' La Dame aux Camélias'' (''The Lady of the Camellias''), published in 1848, which was adapted into Giuseppe Verdi's ...
' ''
La Dame aux Camélias
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...
'' had been associated with courtesans.
She is known to have owned a villa in
Cabourg
Cabourg (; nrf, Cabouorg) is a commune in the Calvados department, region of Normandy, France. Cabourg is on the coast of the English Channel, at the mouth of the river Dives. The back country is a plain, favourable to the culture of cereal. ...
.
''L'Origine du monde''
Halil Şerif Pasha was a notable collector of arts. He commissioned Gustave Courbet to paint Quéniaux, whom he called his "lucky charm".
[ The work '']L'Origine du monde
("The Origin of the World") is a picture painted in oil on canvas by the French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is a close-up view of the vulva and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread.
History Identity of the model
Ar ...
'' hides the model's face. While her identity was known at the time, as Quéniaux grew respectable, the information was lost. Indeed, experts long identified the model with Joanna Hiffernan
Joanna Hiffernan (1843 – 1886) or Joanna Heffernan was an Irish artists' model and muse who was romantically linked with American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and French painter Gustave Courbet. In addition to being an artists' ...
, an Irish model who was Courbet's lover.[
Correspondence between Alexandre Dumas and ]George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (; 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand (), was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, bein ...
was discovered in 2018 by a French historian, Claude Schopp, referring to this painting.[
]
Further reading
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Queniaux, Constance
1832 births
1908 deaths
Paris Opera Ballet dancers
People from Saint-Quentin, Aisne