Marie-Louise O'Murphy (; 21 October 1737 – 11 December 1814) was a French model who was the youngest lesser mistress (petites maîtresses) of King Louis XV, and the model for François Boucher's painting The Blonde Odalisque, also known as The Resting Girl. She was also variously called Mademoiselle de Morphy, La Belle Morphise, Louise Morfi and Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly.
Birth Marie-Louise O'Murphy (or Morfi) was born in Rouen on 21 October 1737 as the youngest of twelve children of Daniel Morfi and Marguerite Iquy. She was baptized the same day in the church of Saint Eloi:
Irish ancestry The family of Marie-Louise O'Murphy was of Irish origin, who settled in Normandy. The presence of her paternal grandfather Daniel Murphy is attested in Pont-Audemer at the end of the 17th century, when his first wife Marguerite Connard (also Irish) died. Militant of the Jacobite army, he followed the deposed King James II of England to his exile in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye; in consequence all the Catholic regiments who remained loyal to the King were sentenced to death in absentia by the new English government.
Very little is known about the grandfather of Marie-Louise O'Murphy, except that he was one of the soldiers fired after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Daniel Murphy (variously named Morfil, Morfi or Morphy), moved to Rouen by 1699, when he married his second wife Brigitte Quoin; according to the parish records of Saint Eloi, in his marriage certificate he is designated as master shoemaker (maître cordonnier).
His son, Daniel Morfi, father of Marie-Louise O'Murphy, married Marguerite Iquy, also Irish, on 21 January 1714 in the parish of Saint Eloi in Rouen:
Of the twelve children born to the couple between 1714 and 1737, five died shortly after birth and seven survived to adulthood: five daughters (Marguerite-Louise, Marie-Brigitte, Marie-Madeleine, Marie-Victoire, Marie-Louise); and two sons (Jean-François and Michel-Augustin).
Family Marie-Louise's parents had well-known criminal histories: Daniel Morfi was involved in a case of espionage and blackmail, while Marguerite Iquy was accused of prostitution and theft. Daniel Morfi appears in the records of the Bastille, where he was confined "for state business" after his arrest on 23 February 1735.François Ravaisson-Mollien: Archives de la Bastille, documents inédits, t. XIV (1736-1737), pp. 405–407. An unscrupulous collaborator, then identified as secretary of Charles O'Brien, 6th Viscount Clare accused him of stealing diplomatic correspondence that his master kept in secret with James Francis Edward Stuart (known as "The Old Pretender"), the pretender to the English throne, then exiled in Rome. Daniel Morfi had tried to blackmail James Francis, by threatening to sell to the court of London the papers he had stolen. The case undermines the French Government, by revealing secret diplomatic negotiations in favor of the restoration of the Stuarts. The arrest record showed that Daniel Morfi possessed a handwritten letter of the Cardinal de Fleury, a letter from Viscount Clare and a letter from James Francis Stuart himself, containing his plans for the Restoration. Daniel Morfi was held incommunicado for seven months at the Bastille; after this, he was able to join his wife and children, but all were locked under close supervision into the Abbey of Arcis near Nogent-le-Rotrou. This confinement was terminated on 21 December 1736: Daniel Morfi was allowed to go wherever he wished, except Paris. Thus, with his family, he returned to Rouen, where Marie-Louise was born a year later.
Margaret Iquy, wife of Daniel Morfi, also left her traces in legal history. Arrested on 10 May 1729, along with Anne Galtier, she was conducted to the prison of For-l'Évêque, and later imprisoned in the Salpêtrière. Nicknamed "The Englishwoman" (l’Anglaise), she was 29 years old and recorded as originating in Saint-Germain-en-Laye; the inspector who arrested her declares that "these two prostitutes lived in debauchery with a young man of family" and "it was by the solicitation of these two women that this young man had done to his aunt a considerable theft".
The sisters of Marie-Louise O'Murphy are also known for being involved in prostitution. Jean Meunier, police inspector who was in charge of monitoring girls and women involved in this work, dedicated several pages to the O'Murphy sisters in the diary that he wrote from 1747 and in a report made in 1753 for his superior Nicolas René Berryer, lieutenant général de police.These two manuscripts are preserved in the library of the Arsenal in Paris: Manuscrits Bastille 10251, rapport sur la famille Morphis, mai 1753 and Manuscrits Bastille 10234, Journal de Meunier. On 12 May 1753 Meunier dedicated three pages to the five O'Murphy sisters: Marguerite, Brigitte, Madeleine, Victoire and Marie-Louise. About Marguerite and Madeleine (nicknamed Magdelon), he notes that they have their "campaigns in Flanders" following the French army, but before their departure would often be in the company of their sister Victorie and "the Richardot, the Duval, the Beaudouin, the Fleurance and other women of the world". About Brigitte, Meunier wrote that "she always stayed with her parents and she wasn't either brilliant or noisy"; however, he concluded that "despite her ugliness we are sure that she wasn't an innocent girl".
This is probably a similar account to the information written by Marquis d'Argenson in his diary on 1 April 1753 about Marie-Louise O'Murphy:
After the death of her father on 4 June 1753, Marie-Louise's mother brought the family to Paris.René Rouault de la Vigne, Les soeurs Morphy de Rouen à Paris et Versailles.
Model of François Boucher In contemporary and modern historiography it is believed Marie-Louise O'Murphy was the very young model who posed for the Jeune Fille allongée (Reclining Girl), of François Boucher,English art historian Alastair Lang, in the catalog of the retrospective of François Boucher at the Grand Palais of Paris in 1985, refutes the identification of the "blonde Odalisque" as Marie-Louise O'Murphy. His theory was further taken by Pierre Rosenberg in his description about this same painting in the "Exhibition Catalogue of Poussin, Watteau, Chardin, David ... French Painting in German collections, 17–18th centuries", Paris, French Society of Artistic Promotion, 2005. a painting famous for its undisguised eroticism, dating from 1752. Two versions of this painting have survived, both conserved in Germany, one in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich and the other in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum at Cologne. Boucher, at the height of his fame, had made a specialty of these deliberately licentious nudes, represented in lascivious poses within a mythological context. La Jeune Fille allongée, also known as l'Odalisque blonde (the Blonde Odalisque), echoes the also erotic Odalisque brune (Brown Odalisque), painted around 1745, several copies of which are kept at the Louvre or the Museum of Fine Arts, Rheims.
In his Histoire de ma vie (vol. 3, chap. 11), Giacomo Casanova relates that he found her "a pretty, ragged, dirty, little creature" of thirteen years in the house of her sister, an actress. Struck by her beauty upon seeing her naked, however, he commissioned a nude portrait of her to be made, with the inscription "O-Morphi" (punning her name with Modern Greek ὄμορφη, "beautiful"), a copy of which found its way to King Louis XV, who then asked to see if the original corresponded with the painting:
In his account of those events, which were written many years later, the Venetian seducer seeks to obtain the central role, even though he was perhaps only a partial witness. He did not specifically cite Boucher and seems rather, in the evening of his life, to have recorded this episode from gossip and pamphlets which circulated very freely in Europe at the end of the 18th century. Other sources are more accurate.
Police inspector Jean Meunier echoes in his diary another version of the facts, that circulates in the months following the meeting of Louis XV and Marie-Louise O'Murphy. On 8 May 1753 he wrote very specifically:
Petite maîtresse of Louis XV The term petite maîtresse (little mistress) was given to Louis XV's mistresses that were not formally presented at court, and unlike the official mistress (maîtresse-en-titre) did not have an apartment in the Palace of Versailles. Generally recruited by the King's valets in Paris' surroundings, if their affair lasted more than a single night, they were placed in a group of houses in the district of Parc-aux-Cerfs in Versailles, or close to other royal residences. Marie-Louise O'Murphy resided there for two years, from 1753 to 1755.
Different stories circulated about the exact circumstances in which she was presented to the King. As was previously mentioned, according to Meunier's reports, this was thanks to the mediation of Abel-François Poisson de Vandières, brother of Madame de Pompadour, showing Boucher's portrait to Louis XV.Excerpt from the journal of police inspector Jean Meunier, dated 8 May 1753. Manuscript preserved in the library of the Arsenal in Paris: Bastille 10234, Journal de Meunier. Another version supports the theory that the recruitment of Louis XV's little mistresses was done under the control of the inner circle of Madame de Pompadour:
Monsieur de Vandières, Director of the King's Buildings (Bâtiments du Roi) in a letterPublished in Correspondence of Directors of the Académie de France in Rome with the Superintendents of Buildings, by Anatole de Montaiglon and Jules Guiffrey, Paris 1887–1912, Vol. X, 1900, pp. 438–439. dated 19 February 1753, gave a peculiar order to the painter Charles-Joseph Natoire in Rome, who provides elements that suggests that he was in possession of the portrait of Marie-Louise O'Murphy made by Boucher, and he was able to show it to the King:
Then it is Dominique-Guillaume Lebel, first valet of the King's chamber, who had the delicate and secret mission to negotiate the "virginity" of the girl and bring her back to Versailles. Thus the Marquis d'Argenson in his diary, dated on 1 April 1753,Journal et mémoires du marquis d’Argenson, published by the Society for the History of France by E. J. B. Rathery, Paris 1859-1867, vol. VII. recorded that "Lebel was in Paris to bring a new virgin ... then he contacted a dressmaker named Fleuret, who provides the lovers with dresses from his shop at Saint Honoré". By 30 March, he still did not know the identity of Marie-Louise O'Murphy and he refers to a "little girl who was a model in Boucher" and the King "would have seen Lebel his valet".
After a miscarriage in mid-1753 which almost killed her (as a result this merely brought Louis XV closer to her because he loved the idea that she had almost died "in service" as a proof of her affection for him), Marie-Louise O'Murphy gave birth to Louis XV's illegitimate daughter, Agathe-Louise de Saint-Antoine de Saint-André, born in Paris on 20 June 1754 and baptized that same day at Saint-Paul as a child of "Louis de Saint-André, Old official of infantry and Louise-Marie de Berhini, resident of Saint-Antoine street", both non-existent persons; the King (who did not want to recognize the offspring born from petites maîtresses and brief affairs) ordered that the newborn must be immediately placed in care of a wet nurse. Subsequently, Agathe-Louise was sent to the Couvent de la Présentation, where she was raised; Louis XV paid a pension for his daughter and appointed Louis Yon, Secretary of the Comptroller of Finances and Jean-Michel Delage, a notary, both trustworthy men, as her legal guardians.Les enfants naturels de Louis XV: Agathe-Louise de Saint-Antoine de Saint-André in: www.histoire-et-secrets.com [retrieved 12 January 2016].
Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly
The name of "Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly" that she used in the second part of her life was invented for her first marriage.