Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  But family demands were making Suzanne’s visits to her mentor fewer and further between. Degas’s letters rang with the hollow emptiness of the growing distance between them. ‘Will this thank you for your kind wishes and remembrance even reach you?’ he asked one January.42 ‘Are you still in the Rue Cortot?’ Never reluctant to voice his displeasure, Degas let her feel the full weight of it. ‘You must, despite your son’s illness, get back into the habit of bringing me your wicked, supple drawings,’ another New Year’s greeting instructed her.43 By the New Year of 1898, there was a supplicating tone to his request:

  I found your good wishes, Terrible Maria, when I got back from Bartholomé’s, who read us yours to him at the table where they were brought up to him. […] It would be a great pleasure and you would not be disturbing me in the slightest, as you fear, if you came by one day at the end of the afternoon, particularly if you bring along a folder of your fine drawings.44

  In fact, Degas’s letter arrived at a moment of intense preoccupation. Paul Mousis had proposed another move, and early in the year, the whole family were uprooted and obliged to settle into the even smarter ‘Villa Hochard’, at number 3, Rue de Paris. Their new home sat on the same, comparatively peopled street as Maurice’s former school, near the Demi Lune Café and, conveniently, just opposite the tramway stop.45

  But if Suzanne’s hands were full acclimatising and ironing out the creases in her family life, Degas continued to refine her professional persona. In 1898, Suzanne was accepted to The Exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London, where her work would be shown alongside what the Pall Mall Gazette commended as ‘some eminent foreign masters of our day’, artists such as Puvis, Manet, Degas, Lautrec and Fantin-Latour.46 Set up with the expressed aim of ‘the nonrecognition of nationality in Art’, the society’s president was James Abbott McNeill Whistler – coincidentally, a great friend of Degas.47 The ISSPG did not disdain, but rather welcomed women artists. Here, a lady did not require a title which defined her in terms of male property; her name alone would earn her respect if it were due. Hence from May, for one shilling, English viewers could contemplate the work of ‘Suzanne Valadon’ and assess her etching in Studies of the Nude.48

  With her international profile taking flight, by the summer of 1898, Suzanne had reason to feel optimistic. She was settled in a new home, and if his performance during the year had been far from exemplary, Maurice surprised everybody when he was awarded prizes for Mathematics and for French language at the end-of-term awards ceremony at the Collège Rollin.49

  But that September, things started to unravel. Once Maurice entered the 4ème, his grades plummeted. His reports were full of telling collocations: ‘insufficient effort’, ‘homework incomplete’, ‘could do better’. By the second term, it had become harder to judge his performance; he was seldom in class. Truanting had become his natural reflex. And there was another problem, too. It gradually dawned on Madeleine, on Paul Mousis, on the teachers at the Collège Rollin, and on Suzanne, with horror, that Maurice’s odd behaviour, his mood swings and his frequent incoherence could be explained: the boy had discovered alcohol. He was not using it as a social lubricant to be enjoyed now and then in company, but as a solitary and vital means of evasion. The walk along the café-lined streets between the Collège Rollin and the Gare du Nord clutching his pocket money had become an irresistible window to the melancholy schoolboy. In fact, it had already reached the stage where he could barely get from breakfast through till bedtime without drink. He was not yet sixteen.50

  Despite his poor performance during the academic year 1898–99, Maurice was provisionally allowed to progress to the next class. But by January, he was issued an ultimatum: either he repeat the previous year, or leave the school.51

  Mousis advised Suzanne that they take advantage of the situation to start Maurice in a career, and with his wife’s consent, he began to scour his contacts for possible positions. A post was eventually found working as an office boy for an English employer.52

  It could have been a bright start to a prosperous future in business. But in Maurice’s expulsion from the Collège Rollin, Suzanne could sense ominous overtones. All at once, subtle fault lines in the smooth veneer of her bourgeois life had become sizeable cracks. Her meticulously balanced composition had begun to fall apart.

  CHAPTER 10

  Deviants or Delinquents

  Lou chiei ei per chassà, lo lèbre per fugi.

  (The dog is made to hunt, the hare to flee.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  The 20th century was welcomed with a buzz of expectation. Spoken, its very sound had a novel, optimistic ring. In the last part of the 19th century, France had witnessed remarkable progress in areas as diverse as education, the arts, science and technology. Industry was booming, culture rich and prospering, and living conditions for the average Frenchman were better than ever before. 1900 was the dawn of a new age, and it was hoped that recent achievements would form the basis for even further French advancement.

  Paris saw no better way to mark such a pivotal moment in history and declare national prowess than by hosting a world fair. Hence that April, what was tipped to be the most magnificent Exposition Universelle to date opened its doors to the triumphant peals of La Marseillaise, and for seven months, Paris was transformed into a carnivalesque spectacle such as had never been seen.

  There were remarkable wonders to behold: the Palais d’Électricité dazzled hypnotically like an incandescent temple; the trottoir roulant or moving pavement transported visitors around the Champ de Mars; while the first underground line, the Métropolitan, was nearing completion, and potential passengers were promised that by July, they would be able to speed along beneath the surface of the Earth. There was already an additional railway station, the Gare d’Orsay, and one of the most talked-about new landmarks was the Pont Alexandre III, named after the late tsar and constructed across the Seine as a monument to the recent alliance between France and Russia. And in addition to over 200 temporary buildings and pavilions, there were two new permanent art palaces, the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais. ‘To our childish eyes,’ remarked visitor P. Morand, ‘it was a marvel, a coloured picture book, a cave filled by strangers with treasure.’2

  While everyone was welcome, Paris was reluctant to share the limelight. French exhibitors far outnumbered those of visiting countries. In the Exposition Décennale, France boasted over 1,000 exhibitors, the USA 251 and Great Britain only 223.3 There was something of a competitive edge to the whole Exposition, which left a sour note in the mouths of certain foreign participants and even many French. Indeed, with so many visitors, France inevitably opened its doors to critics as well as supporters. Eulogies of France’s glory were matched by criticism targeting misjudged expressions of self-importance and commercialism. ‘What sort of fair is this odious bazaar,’ Camille Pissarro exclaimed in a letter to his son Lucien, echoing a common view.4 Moreover, the Exposition was far from complete when its doors opened in April, meaning that inaugural ceremonies had to take place in a state of constructional mayhem and mud.

  Presenting such a far-ranging amalgam of styles and schools served up a spread many found indigestible and sickly. The organisers’ decision-making process was loaded with controversy, too. The Impressionists were excluded from the Décennale; in the galleries where they were exhibited, conservative painter Jean-Léon Gérôme swept in front of President Émile Loubet when he attempted to visit the show, barring the entrance with the warning: ‘the shame of French painting is in there’.5

  Gérôme’s melodramatic gesture encapsulated the tension at the heart of the Exposition. France was poised on a knife-edge, torn between old and new, permanence and change, regret and hope. Something of that ambience was reflected in Suzanne’s life and mood as she entered her 35th year. The past was familiar yet flawed, the future loaded with uncertainty, fear and anticipation.

  Maurice’s employment with his stepfather’s English coll
eague had been short-lived. After only a few months serving as a general dogsbody, delivering post, cleaning offices and answering the phone, Maurice found himself again at home, unemployed and melancholy. But then, to everyone’s delight, another of Paul Mousis’s enquiries on his stepson’s part bore fruit. The chef de famille returned home one day to announce that Maurice had been found a job with the esteemed bank Crédit Lyonnais. It was an exciting prospect. With Maurice’s mathematical skill, he was bound to excel in the role.6

  One hot morning in June while swarms of Parisians flocked to the Exposition grounds, Suzanne and Madeleine ushered a carefully washed and dressed Maurice out of the house to begin his first day working for the biggest bank in France.

  The mother and grandmother were heartened when the sixteen-year-old appeared keen as he set off towards the Boulevard des Italiens. But had anyone questioned him, they would have found his pleasure to be due not to his new post but to the smart bowler hat it entitled him to wear. He near-worshipped the accessory, it was his pride and joy – but also his downfall. Socially awkward by nature and accustomed to abuse, Maurice pre-empted his co-workers’ antipathy and insulted them first. One evening as he came to leave the office, he found that one of his victims had sought revenge by beating in his precious hat. His upset quickly turning to anger, he seized his umbrella and brought it smashing down on the offender’s head. Maurice stormed out of the offices and his banking career was over.7

  Subsequent attempts to reset him on a career path failed miserably. He worked for a French sales representative, a German businessman, and several other companies. None of the positions lasted long, often only a few weeks. Somehow, Maurice always managed to put his employer’s back up, either by failing to complete his duties efficiently or by simply being rude. Each time, there came a day when he had to return home and report to Suzanne and Madeleine that he had again been asked to leave. With his negative self-image, Maurice resigned himself to the conclusion that his character was fundamentally flawed. He was simply not cut out for business.

  By the autumn, the Exposition Universelle was drawing to a close, and Maurice was again at home, where he moped around aimlessly, seeking comfort in the soothing embrace of liquor. He no longer made any attempt to conceal his shameful vice, helping himself to drink from Mousis’s cellar and demanding more rouge from his grandmother whenever his glass ran dry. His mood oscillated precariously between bitter rage at his lot and deep, tearful remorse. Painfully insecure, whenever he felt hunted, his response was to lash out in defence. Some evenings, he would trip into town, and many a night saw him stumble home bruised and bloody having riled one or other of the locals. Curiously, he became deeply agitated whenever he encountered a pregnant woman, and any female with a swollen belly was subject to a torrent of abuse if she passed him in the street. Then on one occasion, he stepped out in front of a tram, his arms folded across his chest, and refused to move.8

  Maurice’s eccentric, antisocial behaviour became a feature of Pierrefitte. In town, residents whispered about the Mousis-Valadon family and their half-crazed son, while behind the closed doors of Villa Hochard, fiery scenes became a fixed part of the weekly ritual. And the roles were always the same: Maurice throwing a tantrum, breaking glass and china if denied wine, or else sobbing remorsefully like a bereaved child; Madeleine at a loss but attempting to calm her ‘Maumau’ with grandmotherly love and reassurance; Paul Mousis, tired after a long day at the office, exasperated and hurt if Suzanne did not take his side; and then Suzanne, torn between the man she had married and who had sacrificed so much for them all, and the son she had carried inside her for nine months and who found life so cruelly weighted against him.

  Art could no longer be Suzanne’s priority.

  Meanwhile, the art scene in the capital was flourishing. While Suzanne’s career continued to stagnate, all around her, creativity was simmering. A new generation of young avant-garde painters had firmly grasped France’s creative legacy and were carrying art into the new century with optimism and gusto.

  In October, a twenty-year-old Spaniard with olive skin, eyes like obsidian and a penetrating stare, stepped off a train with his friend and fellow painter, Carles Casagemas.9 The young Pablo Picasso had come to see a painting he had had accepted to the Exposition Universelle, Last Moments (1899), fittingly, just as the Exposition was closing. Born in Malaga in 1881, the youngster had paint and charcoal near coursing through his veins; his father was an artist and it was he who had given the boy his first lessons while enrolled at the Escuela Provincial de Bellas Artes. As a teenager, the Spaniard moved to Barcelona, where he was accepted into the academy aged fourteen, and later, to the Real Academia San Fernando in Madrid. After a summer at Horta de Ebro in 1898, he returned to Barcelona re-energised and eager to share ideas with other exponents of contemporary Spanish art. By 1899, he had become a regular at the quirky new café-cum-cabaret, El Quat Gats, which had established itself as a hub of literary and artistic expression. The venture was modelled on Le Chat Noir, and with its Chinese shadow shows, literary evenings and exhibitions, it paid overt homage to its Parisian forbear, itself no more after Rodolphe Salis’s death in 1897. In the spring of 1900, the young artist from Malaga mounted an exhibition of portraits at the venue, which led to the foreman, Père Romeu, commissioning him to produce a drawing for the establishment’s menu. Now in its third year, El Quat Gats had become a magnet for avant-garde artists, writers and intellectuals in search of sympathetic confrères. And it just so happened that one of the founders of the young Picasso’s favourite haunt was a man Suzanne knew well: Miguel Utrillo.

  Picasso and Miguel were both part of a shifting group of young Spanish artists who patronised El Quat Gats. In 1899, Picasso had created a portrait of Miguel in pen and sepia ink wash. And now arriving in Paris, Picasso could understand Miguel’s affinity with the French capital. Forward-thinking French painters like Toulouse-Lautrec won his deep admiration. Picasso was eager to discover the true origins of Spanish art, and to his delight, he found that he did not have to do so alone. The Exposition attracted a swarm of the Spanish artists who had made friends in Barcelona, among them Ramon Pichot, Carles Casagemas, Germaine Gargallo – and Miguel.

  Accepting the hospitality of fellow painter Isidro Nonell in Montmartre, Picasso quickly settled into the rhythm of life in the capital.10 He was enraptured to discover all Miguel and Suzanne’s old haunts. The Lapin Agile and the Moulin de la Galette became favourite watering holes. The conversation, the stimulus, the creative freedom – it was as though oppressive walls had crumbled and at last, he had a clear view of his surroundings. With Miguel and the little colony of Spanish friends, Picasso smoked, drank and talked, wandering around the Exposition in awe by day, stumbling home sated with alcohol and inspiration at night. Picasso even did a drawing of the group, Miguel among them, staggering out of the Exposition in a raucous fashion.11

  Miguel did not use his return to Paris as an opportunity to forge any stronger connection with Suzanne or Maurice. Meanwhile, his friend was embarking on the kind of life Suzanne had just started to taste before she got married, an existence driven by creative purpose where the possibility of an exhibition was always just around the corner.

  Picasso’s early works had been naturalistic in style, and often depicted close family or those on the margins of society. As a teenager, he had also contributed satirical illustrations for local papers. Now, he started to fuse the palette of El Greco with the evocative imagery characteristic of the Symbolist movement.12 Picasso used his time in Paris to introduce himself to dealers. Enlightened artists and collectors could see that his was a singular and original talent, and before long, one of these contacts, Pedro Mañach, offered him a contract. Soon after, another dealer – a sign of the times, a woman – Berthe Weill, also agreed to buy some drawings.13

  By the end of 1900, Picasso was at the forefront of Parisian avant-garde art and looked set on an auspicious career path. Conversely, Suzanne’s life seemed to have taken an
altogether different course. With matters at home so chaotic, she had all but stopped producing the bold figure studies with confident lines that Degas so admired.

  But Suzanne had not ceased working entirely; that year, she created two works, both of them uncharacteristic. The first was a still life, Apples and Pear (1900).14 It was exceptional in her oeuvre to date. As a model, Suzanne had through default only ever seen artists working on the figure. With no formal training, she had gravitated towards what she knew. And the movement of the human form fascinated her; to her mind, capturing the fleeting moment and freezing it forever was what art was all about. She had always painted people as a way of understanding them, using her figure studies as a form of dialogue. Now, she felt compelled to choose subjects that demanded nothing of her in return. The composition was simple, naive even, the forms crudely drawn, the palette limited. With her personal life fraught, complex and demanding, Suzanne sought simplicity in her art. She took ownership of the work, signing it confidently with a sure and steady hand.

  The other piece she produced that year was just as atypical. Maternity (1900) was the first mother and child scene she had ever drawn. And yet it was a subject she knew. The composition was tender, gentle, balanced – quite unlike her studies of older children and nudes. The baby and carer were engaged in an intimate and private act; they asked nothing of her. But if that was what Suzanne wanted at the time, she did not pursue the idea; she left the study as an experimental sketch rather than a finished piece and never again returned to the theme.15

  Her withdrawal from creative life did not go unnoticed.