This is the bed of the legendary courtesan Émilie-Louise Delabigne (1848-1910). The writer Emile Zola wrote about it in his novel, Nana. ‘A bed such as has never existed, a throne, an altar where Paris came to admire her sovereign nudity’.

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By the time she died, Louise was a millionaire with a vast estate of grand houses, jewellery, & a substantial art collection. But her beginnings were considerably more humble.

She was the illegitimate daughter of Émilie Delabigne, a laundry maid from Normandy who sold sex to subsidise the pittance washing clothes brought in.

By the age of 10 she was working in a Paris sweet shop, by 13 she was working in a dress shop. The dress shops & milliners of Paris were full of ambitious, but poor young women and gave then access to wealthy customers.

As a result, they gathered a reputation as establishments where more than buttons & bows were on offer. The women who worked in dress shops & subsidised their income with sex work were called ‘la grisette’.

Grisette comes from the cheap, grey fabric that they used to make their own dresses. (Two Grisettes, by Constantin Guys)

It wasn’t long before Louise became a grisette. Much later, she wrote about this time. ‘I wanted to see, so I drew nearer to this world which was spinning around me and to which I did not seem to belong. I was swept up in a terrible chain’.

During this time, she met and fell in love with 20yo Richard Fossey, with whom she had two children, (Julia Pâquerette Fossey & Valérie Fossey). Fossey promised to marry Louise but never did & eventually left her to go to Algeria

Louise turned the care of her daughters over to her mother. This was the beginning of years of acrimony & custody suits as Louise’s mother refused to give the daughters back & lose the money she was given for their care.

Louise changed her name to "Valtesse", which sounds like "Votre Altesse" (your highness). She resolved to never marry & to make her fortune by whatever means she could. Later, she changed her last name to "de la Bigne", & gave herself the title of "Comtesse".

She became the mistress of the composer Jacques Offenbach, who put her on the stage. Although she wasn’t a very good actress, it did allow her access to the Parisian elite.

She caught the eye of Prince Lubomirski, who installed her in an apartment in rue Saint-Georges. She wrecked it & left him for a string of wealthy lovers, including Prince de Sagan, whom she managed to bankrupt by having him build her a mansion.

When the author Alexandre Dumas asked to enter her bedroom, she simply replied, "Dear sir, it's not within your means”

(Portrait by Henri Gervex)

She had many nicknames, but one was l'Union des Peintres (union of painters) because of the number of artists she took as lovers. Manet, Gervex, Detaille, Courbet, Boudin and Alphonse de Neuville were but a few of her devotees. (Portrait by Édouard Manet, 1879

She was a master manipulator of public image & courted journalists, who in turn wrote about her endlessly. She made blue her signature colour & adopted the violet as ‘her’ flower. She even published her own novel, the semi-autobiographical “Isola” in 1876. (Manet's Nana, 1877)

Valtesse retired in her mid-50s & spent most of her time at her home in Ville-d'Avray, where she trained young women to become courtesans. When she was 62, she became very ill & knew she was dying. She wrote her own death announcement.

"One must love a little or a lot, following nature, but quickly, during an instant, as one loves a birdsong which speaks to one's soul & which one forgets with its last note, as one loves the crimson hues of the sun at the moment when it disappears below the horizon". (By Gervex)

She left her vast art collection & her bed to various French Museums with the instruction that they should always be exhibited with a plaque nearby, identifying the source as Valtesse de la Bigne.