Marie-Louise O'Murphy

Marie-Louise O'Murphy (; 21 October 1737 – 11 December 1814), also variously called Mademoiselle de Morphy, La Belle Morphise, Louise Morfi or Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly, was the youngest lesser mistress (petites maîtresses) of King Louis XV of France, and the model for François Boucher's painting The Blonde Odalisque, also known as The Resting Girl. Birth Marie-Louise O'Murphy (or Morfi) was born in Rouen on 21 October 1737 as the youngest of twelve children of Daniel Morfi and Marguerite Iquy. She was baptized the same day in the church of Saint Eloi: Irish ancestry The family of Marie-Louise O'Murphy was of Irish origin, who settled in Normandy. The presence of her paternal grandfather Daniel Murphy is attested in Pont-Audemer at the end of the 17th century, when his first wife Marguerite Connard (Irish like him) died. Militant of the Jacobite army, he followed the deposed King James II of England to his exile in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye; in consequence all the Catholic regiments who remained loyal to the King were sentenced to death in absentia by the new English government. Very little is known about the grandfather of Marie-Louise O'Murphy, except that he was one of the soldiers fired after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Daniel Murphy (variously named Morfil, Morfi or Morphy), moved to Rouen by 1699, when he married his second wife Brigitte Quoin; according to the parish records of Saint Eloi, in his marriage certificate he is designated as master shoemaker (maître cordonnier).