Marie-Louise O'Murphy by François Boucher

Marie-Louise O'Murphy (1752)

This is probably my favourite painting of all time: Mary-Louise O'Murphy de Boisfaily by François Boucher (1703-1760).  A picture I fell in love with when I was about eleven (at the same time that I noticed that Carol, Cathy and Heather in my class were really pretty).  She was the fifth daughter of an army officer of Irish extraction, Daniel O'Murphy de Boisfaily.  She was born in Rouen on October 21st 1737. After her father died her mother took her to Paris where the widow traded in second hand clothes whilst finding work for her daughters. Mary-Louise became a dancer at L'Opera and a model. Casanova knew her (she is mentioned in his diaries) and she may have been his mistress, briefly. Casanova certainly introduced her to Boucher who painted this picture of her in 1752 and also had an affair with her (33 year age difference not withstanding). It has been argued that the picture was produced as a direct invitation to Louis XV; demonstrating that she was available to be his mistress. Rather like leaving a photographic postcard of a girl in a phone box outside a Park Lane hotel. There was no issue about presenting a fourteen year old girl as a sexual object in France at the time. The age of consent was, after all, ten during this period and girls could get legally married at twelve.  

Original life sketch of Marie Louise

Louis XV knew a fine piece when he saw it (he liked the painting too) and she quickly became one of his second tier mistresses and stayed so for two years. Louis had an official mistress, of course, Madame de Pompadour, who may have been happy at first for the king to entertain this plump little distraction as she was increasingly exhausted by Louis voracious sexual demands. Mary-Louise bore the king an illegitimate daughter, Agathe Louise de Saint-Antoine (1754-1774), but she tried to oust Madame de Pompadour from top mistress spot and was soon kicked out of the court and married off to Comte de Beaufranchet, who must have been very cheered by this development, as Mary-Louise was still only 17. He didn't get to enjoy her for very long, though, as he was killed at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757, where Frederick the Great smashed a combined Franco-Austrian army. Mary-Louise subsequently had two more husbands, including one who was thirty years younger than her who she married at the age of 61! Although she was imprisoned for a time during the French Revolution she survived The Terror and died in 1814 at the age of 77. The painting now hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. I was lucky enough to see it displayed in an exhibition in Berlin,some years ago (and purchased a very splendid mouse mat of the picture which is too precious to use). It is a comparatively small picture: about 24" by 29" and was just the sort of sized picture Boucher would turn out for the cabinets of his wealthy gentleman collectors.

Boucher also painted another version of the painting, which is in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, but it doesn't quite have the plump pliancy of the original.  I also saw this one in the Berlin exhibition. 

Boucher (1703-1770) was a prolific artist, producing over 10,000 drawings during his life, and at the time was criticised for churning out paintings for the money. A more telling criticism came from the philosopher Diderot who accused Boucher of "prostituting his own wife" as he had her pose for erotic pictures which he sold to collectors. This led to increasing notoriety and his art was criticised more and more towards the end of his life, as neo-classicism ousted his frothy, Rococo style.