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ÉDOUARD MANET (French, 1832-1883) is considered the first modernist painter, his works stirred up great controversy and outrage. Manet thwarted all the conventions of art at the time, and confronted what was considered vulgar and commonplace. He painted everyday people going about their daily lives, with loose brushwork that looked sketchy and incomplete compared to traditional painting styles, insulting the craft of art. He would paint works in one sitting instead of weeks. But most upsettingly and offensively, his subject matter was of people drinking beer and listening to music, flirting; nude women whose eyes met the camera while sitting with fully dressed men; or confrontational prostitutes! At age 51, his foot was amputated from gangrene related to complications of syphilis and rheumatism, and he died eleven days later. At his funeral, Edgar Degas said, “He was greater than we thought.”

See Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent (1844-1927)

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See Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)

While working on and researching for my Brush with Peril Graphic Novel, I read that Manet had a favorite model, whom he used for many of his most famous paintings from the 1860’s to early 1870’s (when the two lost favor with each other). While re-visiting Page 020 of my comic, this fact came to mind and inspired me to insert more references of Manet’s work of her.

[Nice article, including samples of art by her and by others portraying her, at Art: Herstory]

Her name was Victorine Meurent, and she was pretty, tiny, had fiery red hair and a confident gaze.  If I understand correctly (because there are conflicting stories online), she began modeling for Manet in 1862 at the age of 16. She is represented in nine of his canvases, as well as the works of other artsts (there are at least thirty known works including Manet’s for which she was the model).

Less known: she was also an artist, and attended art school at the Académie. Apparently she and Manet had a rift because she wanted to create her own art, and/or because her style was more academic, which Manet opposed. Her recently-discovered self-portrait had been exhibited in the 1876 salon alongside Monet, in a year that Manet’s painting was rejected! And six other of her works were accepted as well – no small feat.

All her work was believed to have been destroyed or lost, but in 2004 a piece was recovered, and a few other of her paintings have since surfaced.

In fiction, Victorine Meurent was a character in the semi-fictional autobiography, Memoirs of My Dead Life (1906) by George Moore, a character in the film Intimate Lives: The Women of Manet, aka Manet in Love (1998), the protagonist in Mademoiselle Victorine: a Novel (2007) by Debra Finerman and A Woman With No Clothes On (2008) by V. R. Main, a character in the novel, Sacré Bleu (2012) by Christopher Moore, her relationship with Manet was depicted in the novel Paris Red (2015) by Maureen Gibbon, and her journey to becoming a painter was portrayed in Victorine by Drema Drudge (2019).

Here are some interesting articles I found about her online:
wikipedia.org (It appears this article got some facts wrong, according to other articles)
artsandculture.google.com
artherstory.net
theartgorgeous.com

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The Gold

This project took eleven years from when I began putting ink to the first page until completion. I kind of jumped into it without knowing exactly what would happen, which is different than how I normally jump into a story. Normally, I have a complete script. I didn’t have a script, I had a vague idea in my head what favorite works of art I would like to reference, and how those dozen pieces would determine the storyline – and that was it. I had a lot of holes to fill in, in between those few banner images. The excitement and story kicked off after I had drawn a couple pictures of my lead character, and it had gotten me excited enough, I just jumped in and thought, let’s see what happens and where this goes, and I started drawing without a map. (Without a very complete map.)

My initial concept – which you can see elements of, on this and the next page – is that the President character is so megalamaniacal, he decides he needs a statue of himself made of solid gold – and that it should be the largest gold statue that has ever been made of someone in history. This idea tickled me immensely, the thought of someone deciding that this is an ultimate show of self-value and worth, and that it would be something to aspire to accomplish. I find it to be such a poignant, sad, ugly, disturbing metaphor to reveal the kinds of needs to feel respected and values we hold high as a society.

I had gotten the idea from an old 1967 episode of the Spider-Man cartoon, in which the villain, The Rhino, decided that HE wanted a solid gold statue made in his likeness – not of whatever he looked like under his costume, but decked out IN his Rhino super villain costume!

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