Artist's Model, Folk Figure. Popularly called "Louison" and "Morphise", she was a noted child courtesain of her day and one of the many mistresses of King Louis XV, though today she is known as the subject of one of the most provocative and controversial works in the artistic canon. Born Mary-Louise O'Murphy de Boisfaily, she was the child of an Irish father and a convicted prostitute French mother and was moved to Paris following her father's death around 1850. According to legend she was seen naked by noted rake Giacomo Casanova who became enchanted and had a nude painting of her created. (Casanova's picture is now lost and is not the famed Boucher painting). Instead of taking the girl for himself Casanova sent her image to the King who quickly claimed her as a mistress. After suffering a miscarriage Louison bore the monarch an illegitimate daughter Agathe Louise de Saint-Antoine (1754-1774) but was to soon find herself bounced, albeit with a goodly sum of money, from the Royal Court for trying to supplant the 'official' mistress Madame du Pompadour. In late 1755 she entered into an arranged marriage with Jacques de Beaufranchet during which she bore one child and was pregnant with a second when her husband was killed at the 1757 Battle of Rossbach. Louison wed for a second time in 1759 to Francois Nicolas Le Normant (1725-1783); she bore Marguerite-Victoire (1768-1814), rumored to be the product of an illicit tryst with Louis XV, and during her time with Le Normant grew quite wealthy. During the French Revolution Louison's Royal connections caused her difficulties and when her paramour Antoine Valdec de Lessart was killed during the Reign of Terror she ended up in prison for five months. Her 1795 third and final marriage to Louis-Philippe Dumont (1765-1854) ended in a 1798 divorce after which she lived out her days in Paris under conditions of relative wealth and comfort. Louison's name has been variously rendered as 'Murphy', 'O-Morphi', 'Morphy', and 'O'Morphy'; her story was told in Duncan Sprott's 1997 novel "Our Lady of the Potatoes" and in a 2006 biography by Camille Pascal.