Marguerite Agniel
InHalasana, Plough Pose. Photograph byJohn de Mirjian, c. 1928
Born	(1891-01-21)January 21, 1891
Died	c. 1971 (aged 79–80)
Nationality	American
Known for	Actress, dancer

Marguerite Agniel (1891 – c. 1971) was aBroadway actress and dancer, who then became a health and beauty guru in New York in the early 20th century. She is known for her 1931 bookThe Art of the Body: Rhythmic Exercise for Health and Beauty, one of the first to combine yoga andnudism.

After appearing inVogue in 1926, she wrote forPhysical Culture and other magazines. In the 1930s, she published a series of books, includingBody Sculpture andYour Figure, advocating health and beauty practices, illustrated mainly with photographs of herself.

Agniel stated that her dance technique derived from Ruth St. Denis (who had followedFrançois Delsarte), while her "aesthetic athletics" came mainly from thephysical culture advocate,Bernarr Macfadden. She described thesexologistHavelock Ellis and themusicologistSigmund Spaeth as major influences.

Marguerite Agniel was born on January 21, 1891, one of the six children of George Agniel and Ada Lescher Flowers. Her father, who had worked as a farmer in Indiana, died in 1893 while she was an infant, leaving her mother to raise the children alone.^[1] The Agniel family was French-Jewish; her mother's family was English.^[2] She was married in New York on March 21, 1917.^[3]

Agniel performed in Broadway plays includingThe Amber Empress with music byZoel Parenteau in 1916, andRaymond Hitchcock'sPin Wheel in 1922.^[4][5]

Agniel appeared in the November 15, 1926, issue ofVogue, demonstrating slimming exercises in the form of floor stretches, with postures close to theyogaasanasSalabhasana,Supta Virasana,Sarvangasana andHalasana.^[6]She wrote forPhysical Culture magazine in 1927 and 1928.^[7]She wrote a piece titled "The Mental Element in Our Physical Well-Being" forThe Nudist, an American magazine, in 1938; it showednude women practising yoga, accompanied by a text on attention to the breath. The social historian Sarah Schrank comments that it made perfect sense at this stage of the development ofyoga in America to combine nudism and yoga, as "both were exercises in healthful living; both were countercultural and bohemian; both highlighted the body; and both were sensual without being explicitly erotic."^[8][9]

In 1931 she wrote the bookThe Art of the Body: Rhythmic Exercise for Health and Beauty, illustrated mainly with photographs of herself;^[10][11] she notes in the preface that her dance technique derives fromRuth St. Denis (who in turn followedFrançois Delsarte), but that her "system of 'aesthetic athletics'"^[12] was based mainly on that ofBernarr Macfadden, an advocate ofphysical culture. She names thesexologistHavelock Ellis and themusicologistSigmund Spaeth as major influences, stating that both had shown "an extraordinarily intuitive understanding"^[12] of her work.^[12]Agniel was depicted in an "elegant, though sharply ironic"^[13]Palladium photographic print by the Canadian photographerMargaret Watkins, titled "Head and Hand". It shows her hand holding a portrait sculpture head of herself byJo Davidson.^[13]

• 
  In "Buddha position",Muktasana. Photograph byJohn de Mirjian, c. 1928
• 
  InSupta Virasana, demonstrating "A good exercise for the back and abdominal muscles". Photograph byJohn de Mirjian, c. 1928
• 
  "AsMona Lisa" byRobert Henri, c. 1929
• 
  Topless, c. 1923

Agniel's friend, the sexologistHavelock Ellis wrote in a letter toLouise Stevens Bryant in 1936 that Agniel's books were "full of beautiful illustrations, nearly all of herself. She has a wonderful art of posing, & they are largely nudes, though she is no longer young."^[2] Devon Smither describes Agniel as "a leading health and beauty guru",^[14] andthe Art of the Body as "a moralizing exercise manual" providing a mixture of exercises, advice on cosmetics, and spiritual guidance.^[14]

The scholars Mary O'Connor and Katherine Tweedie comment that Watkins's portraits of Agniel were circulated sometimes as artistic "nudes", sometimes as portraits, and sometimes as instances of "a regime of exercise and body modification".^[15] They write that since Agniel chose to use these photographs of herself, she is presenting them "not as the passive victim of an objectifying male gaze ... but as the means of promulgating her own vision of the world and her own expertise. She circulates her body as an image of the ideal and for commercial profit."^[15]

• 1931The Art of the Body. London:Batsford.
• 1931 "Dancing Mothers and Dancing Daughters",Hygeia 9:344-348
• 1933Body Sculpture. New York: E.H. & A.C. Friedrichs.
• 1936Your Figure. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, Doran & Company and also published in 1936 asCreating Body Beauty, New York: Bernard Ackerman.

• Mary Bagot Stack
• Genevieve Stebbins

• 1891 births
• 1971 deaths
• American stage actresses
• 20th-century American dancers
• 20th-century American women writers
• American people of French-Jewish descent
• Jewish American actresses
• Jewish dancers
• People associated with physical culture
• 20th-century American actresses
• 20th-century American Jews
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers

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