Ferenc Hatvany
Who was the owner of L'Origine du monde from 1910 to 1955?
LOrigine du monde History . Identity of the model . Art historians have speculated for years that Courbets model for was his favourite model , Joanna Hiffernan , also known as Jo . Her lover at the time was the American painter James Whistler , a friend of Courbet . Hiffernan was the subject of a series of four portraits by Courbet entitled Jo , la belle Irlandaise ( Jo , the beautiful Irishwoman ) painted in 1865–66 . The possibility that she was the model for or that she was having an affair with Courbet might explain Courbets and Whistlers brutal separation a short while later . In spite of Hiffernans red hair contrasting with the darker pubic hair of , the hypothesis that Hiffernan was the model continues . Redhead Jacky Colliss Harvey puts forward the idea that the womans body-hair suggests a more obvious candidate might be the brunette painted with Hiffernan in Courbets Le Sommeil ; and that the identification with Hiffernan has been greatly influenced by the eroticised and sexualised image of the female redhead . In February 2013 , Paris Match reported that Courbet expert Jean-Jacques Fernier had authenticated a painting of a young womans head and shoulders as the upper section of which according to some was severed from the original work . Fernier has stated that because of the conclusions reached after two years of analysis , the head will be added to the next edition of the Courbet catalogue raisonné . The Musée dOrsay has indicated that LOrigine du monde was not part of a larger work . The Daily Telegraph reported that experts at the [ French ] art research centre CARAA ( Centre dAnalyses et de Recherche en Art et Archéologie ) were able to align the two paintings via grooves made by the original wooden frame and lines in the canvas itself , whose grain matched . According to CARAA , it performed pigment analyses which were identified as classical pigments of the 2nd half of the 19th century . No other conclusions were reported by the CARAA . The claim reported by Paris Match was characterized as dubious by Le Monde art critic Philippe Dagen , indicating differences in style , and that canvas similarities could be caused by buying from the same shop . Documentary evidence however links the painting with Constance Quéniaux , a former dancer at the Paris Opera and a mistress of the Ottoman diplomat Halil Şerif Pasha ( Khalil Bey ) who commissioned the painting . According to the historian Claude Schopp and the head of the French National Librarys prints department , Sylvie Aubenas , the evidence is found in correspondence between Alexandre Dumas fils and George Sand . Another potential model was Marie-Anne Detourbay , who also was a mistress of Halil Şerif Pasha . Owners . Halil Şerif Pasha ( Khalil Bey ) , an Ottoman diplomat , is believed to have commissioned the work shortly after he moved to Paris . Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve introduced him to Courbet and he ordered a painting to add to his personal collection of erotic pictures , which already included ( The Turkish Bath ) from Ingres and another painting by Courbet , Le Sommeil ( The Sleepers ) , for which it is supposed that Hiffernan was one of the models . After Khalil Beys finances were ruined by gambling , the painting subsequently passed through a series of private collections . It was first bought during the sale of the Khalil Bey collection in 1868 , by antique dealer Antoine de la Narde . Edmond de Goncourt hit upon it in an antique shop in 1889 , hidden behind a wooden pane decorated with the painting of a castle or a church in a snowy landscape . According to Robert Fernier , who published two volumes of the Courbet catalogue raisonné and founded the Musée Courbet , Hungarian collector Baron Ferenc Hatvany bought it at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in 1910 and took it with him to Budapest . Towards the end of the Second World War the painting was looted by Soviet troops , but later ransomed by Hatvany . Hatvany left Hungary , which was on the brink of a Communist takeover , in 1947 . He was allowed to take only one art work with him , and he took to Paris . In 1955 was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs , about US$4,285 at the time . Its new owner was the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan . He and his wife , actress Sylvia Bataille , installed it in their country house in Guitrancourt . Lacan asked André Masson , his stepbrother , to build a double bottom frame and draw another picture thereon . Masson painted a surrealist , allusive version of . The New York public had the opportunity to view in 1988 during the Courbet Reconsidered show at the Brooklyn Museum ; the painting was also included in the exhibition Gustave Courbet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008 . After Lacan died in 1981 , the French Minister of Economy and Finances agreed to settle the familys inheritance tax bill through the transfer of the work ( in French law ) to the Musée dOrsay ; the transfer was finalized in 1995 . Provocative work . During the 19th century , the display of the nude body underwent a revolution whose main activists were Courbet and Manet . Courbet rejected academic painting and its smooth , idealised nudes , but he also directly recriminated the hypocritical social conventions of the Second Empire , where eroticism and even pornography were acceptable in mythological or oneiric paintings . Courbet later insisted he never lied in his paintings , and his realism pushed the limits of what was considered presentable . With , he has made even more explicit the eroticism of Manets Olympia . Maxime Du Camp , in a harsh tirade , reported his visit to the works purchaser , and his sight of a painting giving realisms last word . By the very nature of its realistic , graphic nudity , the painting still has the power to shock and triggers censorship . Although moral standards and resulting taboos regarding the artistic display of nudity have changed since Courbet , owing especially to photography and cinema , the painting remained provocative . Its arrival at the Musée dOrsay caused high excitement . According to postcard sales , is the second most popular painting in the Musée dOrsay , after Renoirs Bal du moulin de la Galette . Some critics maintain that the body depicted is not ( as has been argued ) a lively erotic portrayal of a female but of a corpse : LOrigine does not represent a full female body but rather a slice of one , cut off by the frame [ ... ] . The pallidness of the skin and the mortuary gauze surrounding the body suggest death . Influence . The explicitness of the picture may have served as an inspiration , albeit with a satirical twist , for Marcel Duchamps last major work , Étant donnés ( 1946–1966 ) , a construction also featuring the image of a woman lying on her back with her legs spread . In 1989 , French artist Orlan created the cibachrome Lorigine de la guerre ( The Origin of War ) , a male version of Lorigine du monde showing a penile erection . In February 1994 , the novel ( Perpetual Adorations ) by reproduced on its cover . Police visited several French bookshops to have them withdraw the book from their windows . A few proprietors maintained the book , but others complied , and some voluntarily removed it . Brazilian artist Vik Muniz created two versions of the famous painting . The first [ 1999 ] is a photograph made of dust or dirt , which plays with the common moralist association between female genitalia and filth . In the second piece [ 2013 ] , Muniz remakes L’Origine from an assemblage of journal clippings that are reminiscent of the anatomic and artistic procedure of cutting that produced [ ... ] the female body . Two Origins of the World ( 2000 ) by Mexican artist Enrique Chagoya recycles L’Origine du monde as a spectral backdrop behind three solid black , blue and white squares of canvas in three of the corners of the painting . In the foreground of the bottom right corner , an indigenous man sits at a fourth canvas , this one on an easel , apparently interpreting the Courbet painting . In 2002 , American artist Jack Daws created an homage to the painting . Entitled Origins of the World , it is a collection of various photographs of vulvas , taken from pornographic magazines , and framed in montage . The British artist Anish Kapoor created an installation in 2004 called LOrigine du monde , which references Courbets painting . The piece is in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art , Kanazawa in Japan . The image is also referenced as inspiring Catherine Breillats filming of the female genitalia in her 2004 film ( Anatomy of Hell ) . The Serbian performance artist Tanja Ostojić parodied the work in a poster in 2005 , informally called the EU panties poster . Like Courbets painting , the poster proved controversial , and was ultimately removed from the art exhibition in which it was originally displayed . The French artist Bettina Rheims closes The Book of Olga ( 2008 ) with a photo of protagonist Olga Rodionova depicting LOrigine du monde almost completely . The few differences represent the evolution of tastes from the 19th to the 21st centuries : perfectly depilated genitalia with clitoral piercing jewelry and an intimate tattoo of Olga Rodionova , in comparison to natural hairy look of Constance Quéniaux . The controversial book gained wide fame and became the subject of a legal fight in Russia . On 23 February 2009 in Braga , Portugal , the police confiscated the book Pornocratie by Catherine Breillat , displayed in bookshops using as its cover . A great deal of controversy was sparked by the police action . The reason given was the need to maintain public order . Also , the book title incorrectly hinted at pornographic content . Portuguese law forbids public displays of pornography . In 2010 , British composer Tony Hymas composed a musical suite dedicated to the picture as well as relations between Courbet and the Paris Commune , based on texts by Courbet himself , Charles Baudelaire and Pierre Dupont . In February 2011 , Facebook censored after it was posted by Copenhagen-based artist Frode Steinicke , to illustrate his comments about a television program aired on DR2 . Following the incident , many other Facebook users defiantly changed their profile pictures to the Courbet painting in an act of solidarity with Steinicke . Facebook , which originally disabled Steinickes profile , finally re-enabled it without the picture . As the case won media attention , Facebook deleted other pages about the painting . In October 2011 , again , a complaint was lodged against Facebook with the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris ( Paris court of general jurisdiction ) by a French Facebook user after his profile was disabled for showing a picture of . The picture was a link to a television program aired on Arte about the history of the painting . As he got no answer to his emails to Facebook , he decided to lodge a complaint for infringement of freedom of expression and against the legality of Facebooks terms which define the courts located in Santa Clara County , California , as the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all litigating claims . In February 2016 , the Paris court ruled that Facebook could be sued in France . The German-born Turkish artist Taner Ceylan has painted a work named 1879 ( From the Lost Paintings Series ) ( 2011 ) in which a veiled Ottoman noblewoman stands before the framed canvas of LOrigine du monde . On 29 May 2014 , a Luxembourg performance artist , Deborah De Robertis , sat on the floor in front of the painting and mimicked the view of the subject . This resulted in security guards closing the room and her arrest . US artist Candice Lin recreated L’Origine du monde in a video of her an audiovisual sculpture Hunter Moon / Inside Out ( 2015 ) . In it , Courbet’s L’Origine du monde with eyes looks back at the onlookers . From a feminist point of view , Lins work challenges the asymmetry of power [ ... ] between those who look and those who are seen . Filmography . - Jean Paul Fargier , , 1996 , 26 minutes External links . - Musée dOrsay : LOrigine du monde - Musée dOrsay : LOrigine du monde - Musée dOrsay : LOrigine du monde – Notice d´Oeuvre - News from CARAA - Conference from Musée dOrsay - Composition of LOrigine du monde - 2018 BBC story