Victorine’s pose in Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) makes her almost a mirror image of an earlier Manet painting, La Nymphe Surprise (1861). The leg folded under, entwined in white fabric; the glance over the shoulder; even the dark forest setting all relate the two paintings to each other. And intriguingly, the model for the nymph was another very important woman in Manet’s life - his future wife, Suzanne Leenhoff.
Suzanne was not the average upperclass wife. Manet met her when she was hired as a piano teacher in his parents’ household - a respectable occupation, but also a decidedly middle-class one. Neither a marriageable equal nor a lower-class trollop, Suzanne did not precisely fit into the usual dichotomies of upper-class sexual relations. Yet still, before Manet was twenty, she bore a son, Leon, who was either Manet’s, his father’s, or his brother’s. Normally, such a birth would only entitle Suzanne to a pension and a ticket on the first train out of Paris; ten years later, however, Manet married her against the wishes of his ailing father (Brombert 98). As with most aspects of Manet’s love life, his relationship with his wife remains something of a mystery. She did not fit in well in Parisian high society, and to the end of her life it was Manet’s mother, Eugénie, who acted as hostess at his parties. Some found Manet’s attraction to this “fat, placid Dutchwoman,” as De Nittis put it, inexplicable (Brombert 97). Other sources refer to her as the love of Manet’s life. In any case, Manet’s marriage to Suzanne brought him a comfortable, stable family life, enfolding even his illegitimate son, half-brother, or nephew Leon into an at least outwardly conventional arrangement. (Manet’s family, like many of his paintings, was a subtle rearrangement of traditional forms.)
La Nymphe Surprise reflects this vision of Suzanne, couching her sexuality in a traditional context. Although Manet’s use of his wife as a nude model is rather unconventional, the painting itself is not. It shows a nude in mythological context, removed from everyday sexuality as per the specifications of Salon judges. Unlike Victorine, Suzanne does not appear to fight against this costuming; in fact, she seems quite docile and vulnerable. She does not just turn her body away from us but folds herself up in her white garment; she is protecting herself, not teasing us. Yet with all its soft flesh and tumbling golden locks, the painting is certainly sexually charged - but charged with something very different than Victorine’s aggressive presence. In La Nymphe Surprise, Manet depicts Suzanne as an icon of conventional, submissive female sexuality. His reasons for marrying her no longer seem so obscure.
Did Manet have La Nymphe Surprise in mind when he posed Victorine for Déjeuner sur l’herbe? If so, Déjeuner sur l’herbe is fraught with deep personal implications for Manet. Manet had just married Suzanne, placing the final seal of stability on their relationship, when he began painting Victorine. Replacing a submissive nymph with an aggressive modern woman shows just what a threat Victorine was - not only to Manet himself, but to the ideals of sexual morality and womanhood that under-girded his newly stable family life.
Left: Manet, Edouard. La Nymphe Surprise. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Right: Manet, Edouard. Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. (detail)