Who Was The First Modern Glamour Model?

The world of glamour photography is older than a lot of people think, with over a century of different designs and photographic traditions.

However, the woman often credited as the first ever glamour model in the modern sense of the term is an enigmatic French artist in her own right who may have been the link between the glamour models of the art world and the new, erotic photography world.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the French postcard exploited a loophole in obscenity laws at the time that allowed for the creation of nude “Academié” study photographs as well as their mass production as artistic “postcards”, as long as they were not actually used in the postal service.

Of the many popular French postcard models, by far the most famous was Miss Fernande, the favoured subject and lover of photographer Jean Agélou, who would regularly pose for a range of glamour images that became particularly popular with soldiers during the First World War.

Whilst the connection has never been truly established, there is evidence to suggest that Miss Fernande was the model and painter Fernande Barrey, who was the muse of many different artists based in Paris including Amedeo Modigliani and Chaim Soutine.

They would convince her to study art herself, which she ultimately did at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, around the time that, if she was indeed Miss Fernande, she appeared in many erotic photographs shared across the continent.

The last known glamour photos of Miss Fernande were dated 1913, at which point she focused on her own artistic endeavours if she were Ms Barrey.

She married Japanese-French artist Tsuguharu Foujita in 1917, and her connections to the French art world were critical to the young artist’s success. The pair would divorce in 1928 after a torrid love affair and she would live with his cousin Koyanagi.

After 1935, she would live a relatively quiet life until her death in 1960 at the age of 67.