The photograph above was taken by Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin in 1852 and is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). Art historian Beatrice Farwell believes the woman in the photo is Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent. Here’s another of Moulin’s photos of the woman Farwell believes is Meurent: In Farwell’s 1981 dissertation Manet and the Nude, a Study in […]
I woke up to this fabulous Tweet from Einaudi Editore, the Italian publisher of Paris Red, or Rosso Parigi. Manet first traveled to Italy when he was 21, and I think the country was never far from his mind. In this New York Times article, writer Roderick Conway Morris says that Manet was “consistently” inspired by […]
Since finishing Paris Red in 2014, I wrote a draft of another novel and am at the beginning of a new project. That means I’ve been in love twice in the last two years and am starting a third relationship. That’s part of what writing means to me: letting myself fall in love again […]
France and French things have been part of my writing life for a long time. I’m thinking of Nice today, so I’m posting a poem set in Nice, which is in Magdalena, my prose poem collection. Nice isn’t named, though I do refer to vieille ville, old town. Trains carrying sleepers The dolphins made me stay in […]
I’ve written before about how Manet liked to paint yellow gloves, but today I’d like to take my interest in Manet’s sunny colors a step further. Manet often used yellow or orange to create a spark in a painting. Those might not be the colors we first associate with the artist, but they occur over […]
When I was in NYC, I spent time hanging out with Victorine. I just sat in the room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Young Lady in 1866 is hanging, looking at the painting and watching other people look at the painting. I particularly liked seeing this young woman looking at Victorine because she […]
Manet died a week ago today, on April 30, 1883. He was just 51 years old. I used the portrait Carolus-Duran painted of Manet at the top of this post because I like how Manet looks in it. Friend Antonin Proust described Manet as “ouverte et franche,” and I think this portrait shows that side […]
Today is the official publication day for Paris Red, and I received some great news this morning: the book is a “pick” for Publishers Weekly “Books of the Week”! Paris Red is part of a list that includes Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child, Sue Roe’s Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art, […]
I think Victorine Meurent looks so glamorous in Young Lady in 1866, which is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I put it at the top of today’s post because April turned glamorous for me: Paris Red made it onto “must read” lists at InStyle and Harper’s Bazaar. InStyle said, “You’ll be caught […]
This week Facebook pulled my ad for Paris Red because it said I was “promoting nudity.” My ad didn’t have any nudity in it, but it linked to an interview I did that featured a detail from Manet’s Olympia. That’s all it took for me to get this response from Facebook: Here’s the ad as […]
At 7 p.m. April 24, I’ll be at The Community Bookstore in Brooklyn to read from Paris Red and share in conversation with Brigid Hughes, founder and editor of A Public Space. I can’t wait to see old friends and meet new ones, and I can’t wait to talk with Brigid Hughes. Rumor has it […]
Paris Red: A Novel by Maureen Gibbon 