Marie Lesieur known as Lesueur, was a French ballet dancer.

Life

The daughter of Hébert Lesieur and Marie Calliaud, Lesieur made her debut at the Théâtre de Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

 in 1816, as a 'sujet de la danse'. In the course of a production of the ballet La Naissance de Vénus (The Birth of Venus) in July 1817 she was noted for turning her back on the public, in an inconvenient attitude, but she was pardoned for this and quickly became Marseilles's favourite dancer. Two years later she moved to Brussels to join the ballet troupe formed there by Jean-Antoine Petipa

Jean-Antoine Petipa

Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Petipa was a French ballet dancer and the father of Marius Petipa.-Life:...

 with some of the dancers from Marseille. The Almanach des spectacles for 1820 stated:

She made her Brussels debut at the Théâtre de la Monnaie

La Monnaie

Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie , or the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg is a theatre in Brussels, Belgium....

 on 20 May 1819 in the ballet Almaviva et Rosine and was an immediate and massive success with the public. The 1822 Revue des spectacles described her as a dancer

In a production of the ballet Psyché in April 1823, Mlle Lesueur was the victim of a set-operator's negligence:
Very quickly she won a reputation as a major dancer, but also as a woman of character, who was in the ballet come rain or shine. The famous painter Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

 made her the model for Venus in his 1824 Mars Being Disarmed by Venus

Mars being disarmed by Venus

Mars Being Disarmed by Venus is the last painting produced by the French artist Jacques-Louis David. He began it in 1822 during his exile in Brussels and completed it three years later, before dying in an accident in 1825. It is an impressive, ambitious, provocative and ironic work in which David...

(in which Lucien Petipa

Lucien Petipa

Lucien Petipa was a French ballet dancer in the early 19th century and was the brother of the famous balletmaster of the Russian Imperial Ballet , Marius Petipa...

 also appeared as Cupid). In January 1826 Mlle Lesueur fell seriously ill and, after a few brief returns to the stage, she announced that her health would not allow her to continue her career. With her protector, the comte van Gobbelschroy, interior minister to William I

William I of the Netherlands

William I Frederick, born Willem Frederik Prins van Oranje-Nassau , was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg....

, she set up home in the rural property (later known as the château Malou) he had acquired at Woluwe-Saint-Lambert

Woluwe-Saint-Lambert

Woluwe-Saint-Lambert or Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe is one of the nineteen municipalities located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium...

 near Brussels. Van Gobbelschroy committed suicide in 1850, having used up his fortune setting up the first candle factories in France and Belgium. Some sources state that he and Lesueur married, though the comte's death certificate states he was unmarried. After the comte's death, Mlle Lesueur devoted herself to acts of charity, taking a small apartment in rue de la Grosse Tour, before moving to Ixelles. She died in complete poverty aged 90 in a small house on rue Keyenveld. In 1824 a lithograph by Eeckhout portrayed her as Venus.

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