Who Was Jane Demarsy?
Prior to her acting debut in 1887 this Jane Demarsy, born Anne Darlaud, was already a reputed beauty, an occasional artists’ model (depicted, for instance, by Renoir), and evidently a member of Manet’s social circle.
The catalogue for a 2016 exhibition on the theme of prostitution identified Manet’s young model as the “Jeanne de Marsy” featured in The Pretty Women of Paris, a salacious guide for Englishmen to Parisian prostitutes. There is just one wrinkle: the anonymous author indicates that “her real name is Jeanne Huart,” not Anne Darlaud.
What are we to make of this apparent contradiction? Should we conclude that “Jeanne de Marsy” and “Jane Demarsy” were different people? Or are we dealing with a complicated case of concealed or fabricated identities?
To address these questions we conducted genealogical research, hoping to determine whether there were any verifiable links between the names “Darlaud” and “Huart.” Intriguingly, there did seem to be one. As Anne Darlaud’s 1865 birth record and other documents from Parisian archives attest, her parents were named Jean-Baptiste Darlaud and Adèle Huard.
Could it be that Anne—only 16 years old when she sat for Jeanne—used her mother’s maiden name as cover and went for a time as “Jeanne” before reinventing herself as “Jane” when she took to the stage? Perhaps to distinguish herself from her older actress sister Eugénie-Marie, who went, intriguingly, by the stage name Jeanne Darlaud? There is a fascinating and tangled story here that we are only just beginning to unravel.
Whatever stature Jane Demarsy earned as an actress, she never shook her reputation as a so-called demimondaine, or “woman of easy virtue”—a reputation that attached almost automatically to actresses in Manet’s day. In January 1938, soon after Demarsy’s death, the journal La Vie Parisienne published an appreciative notice about this “sensational beauty of the turn of the century,” noting that her passing will be mourned by “many old gentlemen sadly reminiscing about their youthful conquests.”
Want to learn more about Manet and his models? Check out the 2019 Getty Publication Manet and Modern Beauty