"Victorine is a compelling rendering of the life of a model working for Edouard Manet in the 1860s, who longed to be a painter in her own right. In this book, you will feel paint flow onto the canvases of Manet, Monet, Degas, Morisot, Stevens, Meurent, and others. You will imagine life on the streets of Paris in all its beauty, harshness, and fragility. And you will see a relationship between painter and model unfold with remarkable clarity and sensitivity. Victorine Meurent's body is the vehicle for Manet's artistic vision, while her robust courage, irreverence and honesty, and her longing for her own agency, shapes the painter's vision. The intimate collaboration between two artists creates life-changing revelations on both sides-this dance of color and light complicated, sensuous, and intense"--