610) Mèry Laurent

Méry Laurent, born Anne Rose Suzanne Louviot (1849 - 1900). Demi-mondaine (courtesan) and muse of several Parisian artists. She used to run her own “salon” where she hosted many French (and even American) writers and painters of her time: Stéphane Mallarmé, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, François Coppée, Henri Gervex, James Whistler and Édouard Manet.

- "La chevelure vol d'une flamme" crams into the fourteen lines of the sonnet an equal number of words evocative of the radiance of Méry's red hair and of Méry herself..." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephane-mallarme

- "His purpose is to recreate in the reader, through a visual impression of the flame-like quality of Mèry Laurent's flowing red hair..." https://books.google.it/books…

- "He was an ardent royalist and kept a mistress, the Paris grande horizontale, Méry Laurent, a red-haired "laughing beauty with arched eyebrows and a wide-eyed gaze…" https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-france-adored-us