Raoul Charles VERLET
(1857–1923)

WOMAN SITTING ON A BENCH
(DETAIL OF THE MAUPASSANT MONUMENT IN PARC MONCEAU)

1897
Bronze
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Inv. no. 56.3.U

Woman Reading is the alluring, enigmatic figure from the memorial to Guy de Maupassant in Parc Monceau, Paris, and symbolises the author’s devoted readership. The choice of location for the memorial was no accident, since the park – which Munkácsy also painted on several occasions – is the setting for one of the pivotal scenes in the author’s last novel, Strong as Death. Maupassant was always a keen observer of the latest fashions and social phenomena of Parisian life. His novel Bel-Ami even includes an implicit reference to the overwhelming success of Munkácsy’s Christ paintings, in which the name of the artist and the title of the work are changed. One of the novel’s climactic scenes takes place in the mansion of a newspaper publisher who owns the painting of Christ, at a time when “everyone was raving about a great painting by the Hungarian artist Károly Markovits … showing Christ walking on the water”. Involved in an extra-marital affair, the self-made collector’s heartbroken wife sinks to her knees before the painting and begins to pray.

The Maupassant Memorial in Parc Monceau in Paris