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 the ...
's painting ''
L'Origine du monde
(, "The Origin of the World") is a picture painted in oil on canvas by the French painter 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
...
'', in which a woman is seen explicitly displaying her
vulva
In mammals, the vulva (: vulvas or vulvae) comprises mostly external, visible structures of the female sex organ, genitalia leading into the interior of the female reproductive tract. For humans, it includes the mons pubis, labia majora, lab ...
.
Life and career
Early years
Born on 9 July 1832 at
Saint-Quentin Saint-Quentin may refer to:
Places Canada
*Saint-Quentin, New Brunswick
* Saint-Quentin Parish, New Brunswick
* Saint-Quentin Island, in Trois-Rivières, in Québec
France
* Saint-Quentin, Aisne, in the Aisne department
* Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines ...
, Constance Adolphine Quéniaux was the daughter of Marie Catherine Quéniaux. Quéniaux's mother was unmarried at the time of her birth and she reportedly grew up in poverty.
At a young age, Quéniaux 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
Cucchi, Claudina Cucchi, receiving acclaim.
Quéniaux would combine her dance career with prostitution.
In 1859 Quéniaux had suffered from a knee injury that prevented her from continuing with her career in 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
Khalil Sherif Pasha, transliterated variously as Halil Şerif Pasha (, 20 June 1831 – 12 January 1879), was an Ottoman-Egyptian statesman, diplomat and art collector, who lived during the Tanzimat period. His collection was described by T ...
.
Quéniaux 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
Jules Émile Saintin was born in Lemé, France. He was a pupil of Michel Martin Drolling and François-Édouard Picot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts ...
.
Later life
In the final years of Quéniaux'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, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, 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'', usually titled '' Camille'' in English-language versions), p ...
' ''
La Dame aux Camélias
''The Lady of the Camellias'' (), sometimes called ''Camille'' in English, is a novel by Alexandre Dumas ''fils''. First published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage, the play premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in P ...
'' had been associated with courtesans.
She is known to have owned a villa in
Cabourg
Cabourg (; ) 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. The town sits ...
.
''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 painter 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
...
'' 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, 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. Being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balz ...
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