This was the painting that scandalized Paris in 1863: the brazen nude lolling outdoors in a park between two fully clothed gentlemen. The respected art critic Waldemar Januszcak believed that not only was Auguste the real father of Leon, but was also the influence behind Manet’s most iconic painting, Déjeuner sur L’Herbe. With her religious beliefs, it is easy to understand Leenhoff’s shame at giving birth out of wedlock, what is harder to fathom is the distinct possibility that she was both Édouard’s mistress and also mistress to his father Auguste Manet. Which of course begs the question: If Leenhoff was also the mistress of Auguste, then Auguste was just as likely to be the Leon’s father as Édouard. (Édouard, on his part, never publicly acknowledged Leon as his son although this was common practice at the time, especially among artists liable to have one or more illegitimate offspring.) Even when Édouard married Suzanne in 1862, she insisted that Leon was still to be known as her brother and only legally acknowledged him as her son just before her death in 1906 to ensure his inheritance. When baptized in 1855, Leon became known as Suzanne’s younger brother and Leon believed this to be true until he was twenty years old. (Koella was suspected to be an invented name.) The birth certificate cited the child’s name as Leon Édouard Koella. Suzanne was known to be deeply religious her entire life, so giving birth to an illegitimate son less than three years later was at odds with all her beliefs. Why Leenhoff, then herself only 19 years old, left Zaltbommer in Holland and traveled alone to Paris is not known. In 1849, Suzanne Leenhoff was employed by the wealthy, bourgeois Manet family to teach their sons Édouard (aged 17) and Eugène (16), the piano.
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