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 […]
I celebrated Victorine Meurent’s birthday this past Wednesday, February 18. She was born 171 years ago, in 1844. (She died in 1927, at 83.) I know a few other people celebrated along with me because I got some favorites and retweets on Twitter, as well as some likes on Facebook. I thought it would be […]
This is a Julyan Davis painting called By Her Lily White Hand (On the Banks of the Ohio), 2012. It’s one of Davis’s murder ballad paintings, a series of “narrative paintings, setting traditional Appalachian music against the contemporary South.” In the song “On the Banks of the Ohio,” a man asks his love to take a […]
Victorine Meurent is just 17 years old when she meets Manet in Paris Red. (That was probably true in real life, too.) She’s a protagonist with all the strengths and gifts young women have. Does she also have weaknesses? I’m sure. But this blog post isn’t about that. It’s about the power and beauty of being […]
I was really thrilled by Marie Michaud’s review of Rouge Paris for Page des Librairies. She said Rouge Paris was “un roman émouvant sur l’amour, l’art et la vie, véritable plongée dans la bohème parisienne du XIXe siècle.” Click here to read the entire review. Michaud also spoke about Rouge Paris on France Bleu radio […]
As soon as there was photography, there were erotic photographs. I’ve written before about art historian Beatrice Farwell’s theory that Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin photographed Victorine Meurent in 1852. The date doesn’t fit with other information we have about Meurent, but the photos Farwell used to support her argument (found in the Bibliothèque nationale de France) still fascinate […]
I recently redid my website. In the last moments of finishing the design, I decided I wanted to add a line of text to my home page. At first I thought of saying, “When an artist meets his muse,” but when I typed it, something didn’t feel right to me. I’ve written before about how […]
I have a secret. Ever since I received the advance copies of Paris Red last month, I’ve been carrying one with me everywhere I go. I don’t mean that I show it to everyone (though I have shared it with friends), I just mean that I always have a copy in my bag. I guess […]
Sometimes I wonder how a person like me came to write a novel about Victorine Meurent and Édouard Manet. I live in a meadow and see more wildlife than I do museums. I wear jeans every day, and belts with big, rhinestone buckles. (See above.) Though I lived in NYC from 1980 – 1987 and […]
Paris Red: A Novel by Maureen Gibbon 