Laure

Laure was an art model in France known for her work with artist Édouard Manet. She is best known for posing as the black maid offering the white nude figure a bouquet of flowers in Manet's 1863 painting Olympia.

Biography Little is known about Laure. She has been described as African or Caribbean and only the name "Laure" was recorded by Manet.

A notebook belonging to Manet, included in the 2019 exhibition Le Modèle noir, de Géricault à Matisse at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, recorded her address at 11, rue de Vintimille, 3rd floor, in Paris. Laure lived less than a 10-minute walk from Manet's apartment in a neighborhood inhabited by avant-garde artists and writers, as well as a "small but highly visible" black population. In both paintings, Laure is wearing a pink dress with a high white collar and a madras headtie. It is not known whether she was painted by other artists during that period.

In 1862–63, Manet painted a portrait of Laure, La Négresse, which is also known as Portrait of Laure. This painting's subtitle is "une très belle négresse." Legacy Laure has not been widely studied in art history. With a few exceptions, Laure is presented as "ancillary" or as a part of a larger colonial theme within the painting.

Contemporary depictions Laure is a figure portrayed by many black artists who bring her to the forefront as "a subject in her own right, deserving of subjectivity."

Renee Cox frequently references Laure in her works, combining or switching her and Olympia. Her works that reference Laure and Olympia include the 2001 Olympia's Boyz, which combines the characters, and the 2008 Missy at Home, which art historian Tracey Walters views as a reversal of the Olympia and Laure roles. and her 2002 Portrait d’une négresse (Bonny Greer) and Jeanne Duval: A Melodrama. In Jeanne Duval: A Melodrama, Sulter overlay Laure in Olympia with an 1850s Nadar photograph of an unknown black model, who Sulter suggested might be Duval.

Elizabeth Colomba's 2018 painting Laure (Portrait of a Negresse) depicts Laure on her way to Manet's studio. Colomba's painting was included in the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, alongside Manet's paintings of Laure, at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University. This exhibit, curated by Denise Murrell, placed Laure in the spotlight, which redefined and named black women in art.

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