Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  Half-crazed, Satie threw himself into his art and religion. He had already been involved with the Rosicrucian cult of Joséphin Péladan in the early 1890s, where he served as house composer to Péladan’s sect.60 The sect was an art-focused organisation which gave more than a passing nod to Catholicism, mysticism and the occult. The year he split with Suzanne, Satie branched out on his own and formed the ‘Metropolitan Church of the Art of Jesus the Conductor’, making himself ‘Parcier’ (Parcener) and Master of the Chapel.61 He dressed in flowing robes, kept his hair long and his beard pointed, and began issuing all manner of religious pamphlets and writings from his little apartment. Music and poetry, he preached, would redeem souls. Then he tried to gain election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. His nomination caused great amusement. ‘Musicians, be afraid!’ joked Le Gaulois when his candidature was announced.62 Composer Maurice Ravel was less generous. Erik Satie, Ravel declared, was ‘a complete lunatic’.63

  Years later it emerged that the distraught Satie had written letter upon letter to Suzanne, which he never sent. When Uspud was republished, he erased Suzanne’s signature from her cover drawing.64 He eventually died in squalor and poverty in a disordered apartment in Arcueil, a suburb outside Paris. Suzanne’s portrait of him was found hanging on the wall. He was alone; no one ever knew him to have another romantic relationship.

  While Suzanne’s role as a femme fatale and Satie’s perceived decline into lunacy kept Montmartre’s idle tongues busy, Suzanne now rebounded into the ready arms of Paul Mousis. Technically, Mousis still lived in his parents’ home at 13, Rue de Clignancourt, but in practice, he and Suzanne spent more and more time together.65

  Suzanne, Maurice and Madeleine had moved several times since the mother and daughter first arrived in Montmartre. For a time at the turn of the decade, Suzanne gave her address as 34, Rue de Laval, where she sublet living space on the fifth floor from a Mme Marguerite Gérard.66 Then, in the early 1890s, Suzanne considered home to be 2, Rue Mont-Cenis, and not long after, she was living at 11, Rue Girardon.67 But for Suzanne, her street name and number were of little consequence; home was Maurice and Madeleine, with her inexhaustible store of Limousin customs, tales and wisdom, reaffirming luggage which travelled with them wherever they went. Only Marie-Alix was missing, and Suzanne kept in regular contact with her half-sister, writing to enquire after her children. Meanwhile, Marie-Alix always sent a hamper of treats at Christmas time, and Suzanne never failed to write back in thanks, addressing her elder sibling affectionately as ‘dear sister’, ‘kind sister’, assuring her that the goose or the butter or the sausages were feasted upon and scolding Marie-Alix for the expense; Suzanne knew the cost of indulgence.68

  Despite Maurice’s continuing delinquency, with Satie gone and Mousis by her side, by 1894, Suzanne’s life was taking on a less chaotic shape. Her portrait of herself in her late 20s reflected the confidence of both sitter and painter. Each seemed comfortable in their role, while the warm hues of orange and yellow oil paint were dexterously handled. Compared to her self-portrait at eighteen, she now appeared less defiant, more self-assured, at peace. And exquisitely beautiful. At times now, she could almost believe herself a bourgeois lady.

  But then early in 1894, Degas made an unexpected and radical suggestion. Her work had become truly exceptional – one might almost say good enough to appear at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, he mused tantalisingly.

  The notion was outrageous. Appearing at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was one of the highest markers of professional attainment to which a painter could aspire. For an untrained, lower-class woman artist to have her work accepted – it was outlandish, unthinkable, impossible. But Degas had sparked the flame of desire. Suzanne decided that she would do it.

  CHAPTER 9

  Picture Perfect

  Fau naisser per èsser gente, se maridar per èsser riche e crebar per èsser brave.

  (You should be born to be sweet, marry to be rich and die to be brave.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  ‘What?’ Puvis de Chavannes erupted. ‘Never! Whose pupil are you? What will people say?’2 Suzanne should have guessed that her request would be rebuffed. It had been Degas’s idea to seek the support of ‘the peacock’, her former employer, in a bid to see her work hung in the Nationale. It was not a foolhardy approach; Puvis was one of the founders of the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The society had existed in embryonic form in the 1860s, but it was not until 1890 that it became the fully fledged, prestigious exhibition forum that Suzanne now hoped to penetrate. The rebirth had come about when dissatisfaction with the authoritarian approach of the official Salon (yet again) spurred a group of artists to seek an alternative place to exhibit, a salon which was more receptive to new ideas. The group was initially presided over by the renowned painter of battle scenes, Ernest Meissonier, and its committee included other acclaimed artists, not least Puvis, who was made vice-president (and subsequently president), and the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The organisation soon won the respect of critics and erudite amateurs. But however open-minded the society professed itself to be, exhibitors still had to have earned their stripes and the membership hierarchy was strictly codified. Those at the top, the founding members or fondateurs, invited fellow members to become sociétaires, the next class of member. Sociétaires would also serve in turn as jury. Beneath this group came associés, members who had already been admitted and exhibited at the group’s exhibitions and were voted on by the sociétaires. Everyone else had to have all their work subjected to the scrutiny of the jury. A potential exhibitor’s training was given close consideration. Without being formally enrolled in an atelier or school, Suzanne would need a champion on the inside – ideally, a member of the jury.3

  Clearly, Degas’s careful selection of his protégé’s drawings had been in vain. Still, however well-regarded he was as president, Puvis was just one artist. His was not the only opinion which could decide an artist’s fate. There was another tack they could try if he refused to be swayed, not as direct a contact perhaps, but a figure no less influential. Bartholomé, who was by now a regular exhibitor at the Nationale and a sociétaire, happened to know the sought-after painter of portraits, Paul Helleu, another sociétaire, who was much admired by the committee. The sculptor was delighted to be of service and wasted no time in writing to his colleague.4

  ‘My dear Helleu,’ he began:

  four or five days ago, a poor woman arrived on my doorstep carrying an enormous folder of drawings, having been sent by a friend. She wanted to exhibit at the Champ de Mars and was seeking a sponsor. I do not recommend her to you, I ask only that you look at the drawings signed Valadon when they pass before the jury. You will see serious flaws, but also, I believe, such curious qualities that you will almost certainly be pleased to receive them.5

  This time, the benefactors’ tactic paid off; the salon committee agreed to take five of Suzanne’s drawings.

  The acceptance was an extraordinary coup. It was not so much her status as woman that jeopardised her chances of admission; American painter Elizabeth Nourse had actually been invited to join the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and by the mid-1890s had become a regular participant at the group’s annual salons, where she had earned herself a prodigious reputation.6 But Nourse had been born into a highly respectable Catholic family from Cincinnati. She was extensively trained and had already established a reputation in the official Salon before she was approached to join the Nationale. Suzanne was resolutely working-class and had never set foot in an art school or atelier in any other capacity than as a model. Degas and Bartholomé could feel rightly proud.

  On 25 April 1894, the doors of the Champ de Mars swung open. And there on the wall, among canvases by such prestigious names as Eugène Boudin and Carolus-Duran (and listed in the catalogue opposite Bartholomé’s works) were Suzanne’s drawings. She had submitted three studies of children, and two of a subject which formed an intrinsic part of
her daily routine: The Grandson’s Toilette and Grandmother and Grandson.7

  What visitors saw when they stopped in front of Suzanne’s exhibition space was revolutionary. ‘The forms are always vague,’ Gustave Geoffroy had written of Berthe Morisot’s art in 1881. No such thing could be said of Suzanne’s pieces.8

  Suzanne had perfected drawings which were characterised by sharp, almost crude contours. Her profiles were executed with a pure, single line. To achieve such a crisp silhouette in what appeared to be a single stroke demanded confidence, courage and hours of practice. So determined was Suzanne that the figures look just so, that she sometimes used tracing to achieve the effect. But perhaps even more striking than her style was the handling of her subject matter, her compositions subverting the iconographic conventions familiar to the late 19th-century viewer.

  Suzanne presented her drawings of children at a time when conceptions of the family were changing. Starting at the end of the 18th century, the family began to be characterised – or idealised – by more intimate relationships, while the child was increasingly treated not dispassionately as simply a means of securing property and continuing the family name (as in the past) but as an individual worthy of affection. Now, children should be cosseted, nurtured and adored by their parents, who were encouraged to take a more hands-on role in their care. In short, paternity and maternity had become deeply fashionable among the bourgeoisie, that same class who were, coincidentally, the main consumers of art.9

  The Salon walls were obligingly filled with genre paintings in which, in a convenient recasting of the traditional Madonna and child theme, happy mothers cuddled contented, rosy-cheeked infants. Though less formal in style, Impressionists’ canvases – like Mary Cassatt’s Baby’s First Caress (c. 1890) – were also inclined to support the vision of tender intimacy that was felt to characterise the parent–child bond.10 Even Naturalist paintings of working-class children showed their subjects delighting in hard, physical labour. Art tended to reaffirm popular perceptions: children were good, happy and lovable and families were united.

  Suzanne’s pictures of children flew in the face of those idealised images of social harmony. Her youngsters were not nude, but unashamedly naked. They were not posed, but awkward, their scrawny limbs contracted into clumsy postures, ungainly, unaesthetic, but utterly natural. Self-aware but not self-conscious, Suzanne Valadon, Nude Girl Sitting, 1894, black pencil and white chalk, 22 × 28cm, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou. oblivious to the viewer’s intrusive gaze, Suzanne’s children looked introspective, isolated – and lonely, so incredibly lonely. The only carer to be found was the grandmother. The mother was nowhere to be seen.11

  Other artists showed what viewers wanted to see. Suzanne showed them what was true.

  But something else marked Suzanne out as different: in the catalogue to the exhibition, she was listed not as ‘Mme’ or ‘Mlle’ like other women exhibitors, but simply: ‘Valadon, S.’. When viewers looked from the catalogue in their hands to the drawings in front of them, they had no way of knowing that the artist they were contemplating was a woman. Indeed, in the absence of such a title, convention would lead viewers to presume it was the work of a man. Suzanne spurned the notion of the femme artiste – she was an artist, pure and simple.12

  It was perhaps that lack of clarity that led the paper L’Argus to forward a laudatory press cutting intended for Suzanne to the minor painter Jules Valadon, who specialised in pictures of young Neapolitans and had exhibited two canvases at the official Salon that year. The offended painter penned Suzanne a haughty letter requesting that she kindly sign her name in full in future to avoid further confusion, and he ended his missive ‘Jules Valadon, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur’. Her temper fired, Suzanne had only one response for her rival: ‘P*** off!’13

  Suzanne was kicking down the restrictive walls of the art establishment, and no one could be more triumphant than Degas. ‘You must have removed your drawings from the Champ de Mars, illustrious Valadon,’ he wrote to her one Sunday in July at the end of the show. ‘Come along tomorrow and bring me mine,’ he instructed, for he had been sure to reserve one of her pictures for himself at the earliest possible opportunity. ‘Bartholomé will have written to you about a drawing that he was burning to own,’ Degas went on. ‘Tell me, has his desire been satisfied?’14

  Now that she was a proper artist, it was fitting that the bulk of her time be spent working in a studio. Accordingly, by November that year, Degas knew to address his letters to 2–4, Rue Cortot, where Paul Mousis had rented his lover a studio, next door to Erik Satie’s apartment. One such read:

  Terrible Maria, yesterday at the Lebarc de Bouteville’s [sic], I wanted to buy your excellent drawing, but he did not know the price. Come along tomorrow morning at 9.30 if you can with your portfolio; let’s see if you haven’t got something even better.15

  Now, Degas was promoting Suzanne widely. Besides Le Barc de Boutteville, Degas saw to it that her work was known to enlightened amateurs and other dealers, including Ernest Stanislas Le Véel, Arsène Portier, Paul Durand-Ruel (the Impressionists’ main dealer) and the inimitable Ambroise Vollard. The portly dealer from La Réunion had established his gallery in the Rue Lafitte in 1893 and had already made a name for himself as a tireless purveyor of avant-garde art. Rumour had it that Vollard took quite a shine to Suzanne when she was first presented to him in the mid-1890s, and that he had been fixed on marrying her. It was said to have taken all Degas’s ingenuity to dissuade the dealer and spare his protégé.16

  In any case, by 1895, everyone could see that Paul Mousis had become a firm fixture in Suzanne’s life. He had stepped effortlessly into the role of chef de famille in the Valadon household and was making his presence felt.

  While Mousis campaigned to persuade his strict Catholic family of Suzanne’s virtues and her eligibility as a potential spouse, Suzanne enjoyed all the benefits of a bourgeois wife with few of the inconveniences – and none of the ties. People smiled knowingly when it was observed that Suzanne had been able to afford a maid, a buxom Breton girl named Catherine, who was seen walking Maurice to school. Then, Suzanne gave up modelling and began painting full-time.

  Mousis did not boast the sparkling good humour of Lautrec, the multitalented, Mediterranean charm of Miguel, nor the thrilling eccentricity of Satie. But he was undeniably good-looking, manly – and secure. With Mousis providing a stable home life, one weight at least was lifted. Suzanne could now immerse herself in her art and continue in her role as the livewire who helped animate Montmartre’s social scene.

  For an inherently restless spirit like Suzanne, 1890s Paris was abuzz with excitement and change. The daily routine of modern Parisians would have been unrecognisable to her forbears back in Bessines. Technological advances were transforming everyday life. The city’s familiar old buildings were gradually being demolished and gleaming new constructions were springing up in their wake, triumphant edifices beckoning towards the future. Already by the 1880s, telephones had begun to appear in upper-class households, and in the 1890s the motor car burst on to the market. All at once, distance became less critical and time telescoped down. Parisians were being tempted out of the shadows by progress, with freedom offered as their reward.

  But not all change was auspicious. A man of business, Paul Mousis understood that better than anyone. If Paris was the locus of progress, it was simultaneously the centre of dramatic sociopolitical shifts and momentous public disputes. In 1892, the Panama Scandal had hit the headlines, shaming a number of Republican deputies when their corruption in the activity of the floundering Panama Canal Company was exposed.17 Then, bewildered Parisians were plunged into terror, as a wave of merciless attacks by anarchists swept through the city. Bombs were planted in the homes of notable figures, public buildings were targeted (including a café in the busy Gare Saint-Lazare), and in June 1894, President Carnot was assassinated.18 Finally, at the end of that year, just after Suzanne had removed her work from the Nationa
le, the alleged treason of the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus exploded on to the front pages of the papers, turning daily life on its head and becoming one of the most sensational legal cases France had ever seen. Dreyfus was accused of passing top-secret information to the German attaché in Paris, Max von Schwartzkoppen.19 His trial unfolded, with each unmissable daily instalment stirring up yet more anti-Semitic feeling. The affair divided families, turned neighbours into enemies and friends into foes. Dreyfus’s name was on everybody’s lips, and his conviction and banishment to Devil’s Island at the end of the year left a simmering trail of bitterness and social destruction in its wake.

  Paris was in disarray. And with a mistress whose rampant sociability threatened to delay even further his very bourgeois goal of a happy marriage, Paul Mousis was growing disenchanted with the activity of the capital.

  He concluded that a country retreat would be beneficial for his whole ‘family’. But Suzanne was a creature of Montmartre; her very soul beat in time with its electric pulse. Making the case for a town in the suburbs was not going to be easy. Besides, Suzanne had too many other preoccupations for the time being to give thought to the idea.

  Early in March 1895, the art world learned of the tragic death of Berthe Morisot, who expired at her home in Passy. Despite the social chasm between them, Suzanne could not help but be affected. Morisot had left an indelible mark on the history of women’s art and a magnificent creative oeuvre. But just as poignant was her human legacy. The grief occasioned by her demise was something Suzanne witnessed first-hand, since Morisot’s close friends like Degas and Bartholomé were deeply distressed.

  ‘It seems that I must go to Passy tomorrow Terrible Maria,’ Degas wrote, shortly after the news broke. ‘Do make sure you come next Sunday if you can with new drawings. Now that you are well, work hard.’20