The origin of the world (picture)

The painting depicts a hair- covered vulva of a half-naked woman who, having opened her hips, lies on a bed or sofa. The angle of view was chosen so that the woman’s face is not visible, only her abdomen and chest with a protruding nipple are visible . The limitation of the stage by the hips and breasts gives the canvas a special eroticism.

The naturalistic image of the female genital organs is further emphasized by the soft lines of silky matter, framing the naked female body, which covers it and at the same time removes this cover from it. The brown background of the canvas contrasts with the white shiny female skin. Spaced rounded hips express sexual desire.

For a long time, it was assumed that Courbet's model for this work was his favorite model of this period, Joanna (Joe) Hiffernan , at the same time the beloved student of Courbet, James Whistler . In the same 1866, Courbet painted one of her portraits (he owns three more), the painting "Beautiful Irish (Portrait of Joe)." The main doubts in this version were due to the fact that Hiffernan was a red-haired woman, and this is hardly consistent with the pronounced black color of the hair on the model's body.

In 2018, however, the French historian Claude Shopp, studying the correspondence of Alexander Dumas the son , who belonged to the same chosen circle of Parisian bohemia, found in one of his letters to the writer Georges Sand a remark ^{[Note 2]} , which irrefutably indicates that for the picture the artist was posed by a Parisian dancer Constance Quenoux ( French: Constance Quéniaux ), who had left the stage shortly before and was the concubine of the Turkish diplomat and collector , commissioned by the Origin of the World ^{[1] [2]} . Khalil Bey and before that ordered paintings of erotic content for his private collection to leading French artists (among such paintings, in particular, “ Turkish Baths ” by Ingres and “ Sleeping ” Courbet).

After the bankruptcy of Halil Bey, his collection was sold out, and in 1868 the painting got to the antique dealer Antoine de la Narde. Edmond de Goncourt discovered a canvas in his shop in 1889, hidden behind a wood paneling depicting a landscape . The Hungarian collector Baron Ferenc Hatwani bought it in 1910 from the gallery of Bernheim Jr. in Paris and brought it to Budapest . There it remained until the end of World War II . Then the canvas was considered lost, only copies and reproductions remained.

In 1955, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan purchased the original from an unknown seller. He and his wife, actress , hanged him in his country house. But even there it was hidden from prying eyes: Lacan asked his half-brother Andre Masson to make a movable double frame for him, where another canvas hung in front. Masson painted a landscape that exactly repeated the contours of the original. To further emphasize the surrealism of the situation, the second canvas was also called "The Origin of the World."

After the death of Lacan in 1981, the French Minister of Finance agreed to accept the painting for the Orsay Museum as a payment of inheritance tax, the formalities were finally settled in 1995. In 1988 ^[3] , for the first time after a long time, the painting was presented to the public at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The picture is exhibited under bulletproof glass under the supervision of a guard ^[3] .

In France, in early 2013, it was announced that an amateur collector might have discovered in one of Parisian antique shops that part of the painting that depicts the model’s head ^{[4] [5]} . It was suggested that the artist initially depicted the entire figure of the model with his head, but then considered that it was risky to expose the painting in this form, and therefore separated the fragment with the head in order to presumably avoid possible troubles for the model of all, was Courbet's mistress ^[6] . However, experts at the Orsay Museum rejected the hypothesis that the picture was cut into two parts ^[7] , and qualified it as “contrived” ^[8] . The format of this painting 46 × 55 cm was standard at the time of Courbet, who often used such canvases himself. Moreover, the location of the head in the newly found painting does not match the Courbet painting ^[9] .

Comments

Sources

• Savatier Th. L'origine du monde : histoire d'un tableau de Gustave Courbet. Paris: Bartillat, 2006

• Origin of the World in the Orsay Museum Database (Fr.)