Artificial Intelligence and the fishing woman

Jacques (Karel Maximilian Jacob) Comte de Lalaing

(London 4/14-11-1858 - 10-10-1917 Brussels)

was a Belgian sculptor and aristocrate mainly known for his many (animal) sculptures in the public space of Belgium.

Lalaing's classic marble statue of a crouching young women ("Femme penchant", after the old-fashioned  French meaning of "heeling over") is kept in Doornik (Tournay) Musée des Beaux Arts. Its title was also found erroneously as "Fishing Women", obviously a clumsy and somewhat hilarious (not so AI)  translation of the French "Femme pêchant". Probably also induced because the artists depicted a fish at her feet. But that was done, I suggest, to emphasise she was kneeling at a stream and not idling in the lawn. 

Although women today play a pretty decent football match: to my knowledge there aren't many nude women involved in the fishing game........... But However: ......as `always:" I may be mistaken.

Anyway: inquisitive by nature, a book was discovered containing 108 early original anatomical photographical studies, created by Lalaing himself and once belonging to his estate. It is since 2014 kept in the collections of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and: its contents been made digitally available. To my surprise I found these pictures, obviously his own studies for the crouching nymph. 

I think the connection between the actual work Doornik (Tournay) and the pictures in Amsterdam has not been made before.  

For the inquisitive mind the next and 1000$ question would be: 

Who was the young women modelling for the artist?

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(All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, academical and non commercial use only).