Gustave Courbet, Constance Queniaux, L’ Origine du Monde and the Politics of Desire

In 1886 the French painter Gustave Courbet was commissioned by a wealthy collector, who was also an Ottoman diplomat in Paris at the time, to do a painting of one of his mistresses. The model’s name was Constance Queniaux, aged 34, and the single subject of the painting was her genitals. The painting was titled,  L’ Origine du Monde.  There are several ironies to the story of the paintings subject matter that continue to this day. The paintings title makes a philosophical reference to woman’s reproductive role throughout human history. However Queniaux was never married or had a child and preferred relationships with other women. Her relationship with the diplomat was as a paid sex worker and that included in this case posing for the painting. The painting was to be an exclusive private object of pornography and it was kept veiled behind a retractable curtain in the home. Both she and he were never interested in making babies. The educated liberal middle class museum visitor today might think this work represents a liberated attitude towards human sexuality, one not burdened with the economics of misoygny and bourgeois religious morality when in fact the works origin is directly connected to them and continues to provoke. Online photo images of this painting have been banned from Facebook for example. The image is an introduction to developoments to come concerning the framing of the female body historically in modern and post modernist painting.