Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  ‘Every year, Terrible Maria, I see arrive this firm, chiselled writing,’ Degas observed, ‘but I never see the author appear with a folder under her arm. And yet I am growing old. Happy New Year.’16

  Then, in another letter:

  My dear Maria. Your letter always arrives punctually with its handwriting, as firm as though it were carved. It is your drawings that I see no more. From time to time, I look at your study in red chalk, which is still hanging in my dining room; and I always say to myself: ‘that she-devil Maria could draw like a little daemon’. Why don’t you show me your work anymore? I am nearing 67.17

  Degas was right; time was marching on. But the disorder into which Maurice’s behaviour had thrown the family showed no signs of abating, and nor did the shame it brought. Eventually, the situation became so intolerable that, as Maurice remembered it, the Mousis-Valadons were obliged to move to the nearby town of Sannois temporarily until local ill-feeling had dissipated.18

  Suzanne was still striving to steer Maurice towards a more salubrious way of life in early September 1901, when a shattering piece of news reached her: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was dead.

  Lautrec had been on a steady path to self-destruction ever since he and Suzanne last spoke. Years of excessive living had eventually taken their toll, and alcohol and syphilis had combined to hasten his decline. Following a breakdown, he had been admitted to an asylum at Neuilly, where he stayed for some months. During a brief return to Paris, friends were horrified by his appearance. His body was emaciated; his eyes were sunken and the flickering light that always made them dance when he chuckled had all but gone out. He appeared ‘finished, hollow, sick’.19 He fought to give a credible performance of his jovial old self, but nobody was fooled. He returned to his family home to spend his last few days. It was a drawn-out and torturous process. ‘Dying’s damned hard,’ he was heard to whisper to his mother just before he passed.20 He was 37 years old.

  Suzanne later admitted that she cried solidly for a week on hearing the news.21

  All the while, Maurice continued to drink.

  Having invested in land on the Butte Pinson in the commune of Montmagny, Paul Mousis proposed that he build the family a new house. They could have a high fenced garden and no immediate neighbours; it would be far less awkward whenever Maurice had one of his ‘turns’. Thick stone walls would muffle raised voices; shutters could be snapped closed to avert prying eyes; and the tall, imposing structure would present a facade of stability and authority. They could still travel to and from Paris. And indeed, early in 1903, it became clear that for the time being, it would be most practical for the family to make their base the apartment in the Rue Cortot.22

  Home to Montmartre, to the Rue Cortot, its buildings with dirty grey walls, crusts of saltpetre, and laundry drying in the windows; home, through the huge coach entranceway with its heavy door, to the garden overlooking Montmartre’s famous vine; home to the twisted maze of dark, narrow corridors, opening out on to light and airy ateliers; and throughout the building, those little windows which offered a breathtaking panoramic view of the city, always changing according to the hour and the season – Maurice remembered the decision as one of the happiest ever made on his behalf.23 For Suzanne, it was as though she had been reborn.

  One of her few works of 1902 was a self-portrait in red chalk, Suzanne having once again felt drawn to introspection. Gazing wistfully out of the frame at an uncertain point, Suzanne appeared younger than her 37 years, beautiful, fresh, but quizzical. It was as though, for once, she did not have all the answers. But with that return to Montmartre, her self-assurance came flooding back. Suzanne began to work prolifically. She took familiar subjects: nudes, her maid Catherine, her dogs, and flowers – the beauty of which she had now come to appreciate. She also began work on a large canvas, The Moon and the Sun and the Brunette and the Blonde (1903).24 Her painting reflected her altered state of mind.

  Returning to Montmartre, Suzanne was like a wilted plant revived. People knew her, too, even if only by sight. Among young art students and amateur painters, her glittering backlist of employers like Puvis, Renoir and Lautrec had turned her into a minor celebrity. Renoir’s interest in a woman immediately recommended her in the eyes of budding male artists. One morning, two such aspiring young painters had set up their easels in the Rue Saint-Vincent when Suzanne passed with her dogs. Their heads turned as the pretty, petite woman passed them. One of the men was stocky with a big nose, cheerful if unremarkable. But the other was angelically beautiful, slim with golden blond hair and smiling blue eyes. Suzanne glanced over their shoulders to see their creations as she passed. ‘You can’t paint the sky the same way you paint the ground!’ she laughed as she went on her way.25 They watched her go. The blond man in particular never forgot the encounter.

  Just a few weeks after the Mousis-Valadon family arrived in Montmartre that February, Maurice’s first, English employer was persuaded to give the lad a second chance. But within a short time, and following a series of blunders on Maurice’s part, the boss was forced to return to his original conclusion. Then followed a job in a factory, making lampshades; that lasted only a few weeks before Maurice got into a fight.26 And the more positions he was dismissed from, the more angry, self-critical and despondent he became. The fallout led to alcoholic binges of increasing severity and duration.

  It was agreed that returning to the countryside for the summer months and removing Maurice from the temptations of Montmartre would be best. And Suzanne had another project in mind, too. Their family friend Dr Ettlinger, who had stood as witness at the couple’s wedding, had urged Suzanne to teach Maurice to paint. Doing something creative with his hands would at the very least distract him and channel that unspent energy, Dr Ettlinger had reasoned. It might even prove the miracle cure to his malady. Suzanne was ready to pounce on any new idea which offered a potential remedy, however speculative the results. And painting was what she knew. She agreed: the countryside often proved a source of inspiration to new painters. It seemed worth a try.27

  At first, Maurice begrudged being forced to acquire a new skill. But slowly his defences fell. Suzanne, who disdained formal education, became a teacher. And Maurice, who had always run up against authority, began to learn.

  Collapsible tubes of paint had been available since the 1840s, and were developed primarily as a means of prolonging the life of premixed paint following the rapid expansion of mechanical colour grinding.28 Tubes offered the advantage that paint could be easily transported, too, a blessing for landscape artists. However, by not mixing the dry ground colour and the binder (usually poppy oil) themselves, artists found that they lost the subtle distinctions in paint texture. Suzanne disliked using tubes of paint. She preferred the control of pigments that hand mixing allowed, and scoffed at the disdain in which certain painters held the business of mixing paints themselves (on the basis that it turned them into artisans rather than artists). Suzanne always mixed her own colours. Likewise, she prepared Maurice’s palette for him with a limited range of colours: just five. Suzanne preferred to keep her own palette simple so that she would not have to think about it.29 Similarly, for Maurice, she selected just two kinds of yellow, plus vermillion, Turkey red and zinc white, to see how he would fare.30 Maurice later described his earliest attempts at painting as ‘quite detestable’.31 But after a time completing the daily exercises Suzanne set him, something startling became apparent. Suzanne could hardly believe it: Maurice’s pictures were actually good – very good. And they were nothing like hers. He had a style which was entirely his own. ‘You need to learn to draw,’ his mother told him firmly once she had assimilated what she was observing.32 The student and teacher had their next programme of study.

  But Maurice’s new hobby was not enough to silence the call of a more powerful master. When the family returned to Montmartre for the end-of-year festivities, Maurice went out on one of his most serious and prolonged drinking episodes yet. Disappearing in the New Year for some days, the
twenty-year-old eventually returned, wild. He burst into the house, furniture was thrown and split, china smashed, glass shattered. There were screams and bellowing, and Mousis grabbed his stepson firmly. There was a struggle, shouting; the men edged closer to an open window. Suzanne and Madeleine were terrified; Maurice was threatening violence. There was no time to think. Suzanne sent for the police, and once he had broken free from his stepson’s grasp, Paul Mousis had the doctor fetched.33

  Calm was eventually restored and Maurice subdued. But that day, everything changed.

  The authorities ordered that Maurice be admitted to an institution to receive professional care. On 12 January 1904, he left his home with Suzanne, Madeleine and the man he still called ‘M. Paul’, and was escorted to Sainte-Anne’s psychiatric hospital in Paris.34

  The foreboding building had been operating as a psychiatric unit since the 1860s. With its specialists and healthcare, it offered the very best treatment available at the time. But psychoanalysis was still in its infancy, Freud having only coined the term in 1896.35 Diagnosis and treatment remained primitive. Maurice later conceded that the establishment was ‘discreet’; but in reality, the building was a fearful concretion of walls and bars, and visits were strictly limited to allocated days and times and closely supervised.36 Suzanne could not bring Maurice any liquids, sharp instruments, string, food or other object which might incur injury or be used to make an escape.37

  Maurice was placed in the care of Dr Vallon, and within 48 hours, an initial diagnosis had been made. Suzanne learned that her son was suffering from mental degeneration. It was thought to be due primarily to the heredity of his alcoholic father (assumed to be Adrien Boissy), though a second psychiatrist suggested that Suzanne’s excitable nature should also be taken into account. Nobody spoke of alcoholism.38

  While Dr Vallon set about his task of making Maurice fit to rejoin society, Suzanne could only wait, her mood fluctuating between relief, humiliation and debilitating worry. The weeks rolled by, then a month had passed, then two. The silence in the Rue Cortot was deafening.

  Finally, in May 1904, it was agreed that the patient was ready to be released. On his return home to Montmagny, ‘Maumau’ was duly welcomed, fussed over, cosseted and cared for. Suzanne and Madeleine were relieved to see him calmer, quieter perhaps, but looking healthier. In fact, he was quite changed. More introverted than ever, he hardly spoke, never smiled, and would just sit gazing at an undefined spot on the wall or absent-mindedly stroking the cat. The only distraction which held his interest were scientific and technical journals that he could not possibly understand.39 He sat studying them intently for hours, and it took all Suzanne and Madeleine’s powers of persuasion to get him to set them aside to eat a meal.

  Sainte-Anne had restored Maurice’s body and Suzanne’s peace of mind. But it had kept a part of his soul.

  Maurice’s nervous energy had been repressed and he had been reduced to a near-vegetative state. But inactivity did not suit his nervous disposition.40 Slowly, eventually, he was persuaded to resume his painting and to go outside and capture what he could see. Soon, Suzanne was astonished and delighted to see that his work was developing. It was getting better. And his rate of production was staggering; in little more than a year, Maurice completed nearly 150 canvases.41 Fascinatingly, he was not attracted to the figures that caught his mother’s attention. Maurice shied away from human exchanges. Rather, he was drawn to buildings and walls, and he executed his studies with the exactness of an architect, using the same mathematical precision he had brought to his scrutiny of scientific manuals.

  Maurice knew no more about the legacy of French art than Suzanne when she first started painting. He drank in whatever she told him. Once or twice, Suzanne happened to mention the work of the recently deceased Alfred Sisley, and henceforward, the painter became Maurice’s obsession and his idol. He had seen nothing of Sisley’s work but it was enough that he had heard his mother speak of him. It was true that the work Maurice was producing called to mind the Impressionist’s views of buildings and roads. The painter became a yardstick against which Maurice measured his success.42

  Now, Maurice spent all his spare hours painting, studying his canvas and whatever scene he wished to freeze on to it with intensity. On days when he felt unable to face the outside world, he copied comic strips and postcards.43 Painting had finally brought Maurice what he had always craved: Suzanne’s attention and an intimate mother–son bond. At last, they shared a closeness and an understanding unique to themselves, from which M. Paul was firmly excluded.

  But little by little, Maurice’s other master crept back into his life. To Suzanne’s despair, her son’s art progressed in tandem with his drinking. In fact, alcohol actually seemed necessary to his creative process. It did not mar his skill; on the contrary, it sustained Maurice’s spirit and put him in a psychological place where he was able to work.

  On one occasion, Maurice had gone out to paint in the fields around Montmagny. However, by the end of his sortie, he found himself intoxicated to the point that he was quite unable to stand, let alone navigate himself home.44 By chance, a man a little younger than himself had also come out with his easel in search of interesting vistas, and when he spotted Maurice, he could immediately see his dilemma. The man’s light blue eyes smiled with warmth and friendship. He had a lean physique and he was crowned with a halo of golden blond hair. A slurred exchange established the two men’s common profession. The young man was struck by the strange-looking painter before him. His face was gaunt, his dark hair dishevelled and every so often, he jerked or twitched nervously and shouted his replies.45 Both fascinated and concerned, the man good-naturedly offered to accompany Maurice home. Putting his arm around the drunkard, he attempted to hold Maurice upright as he weaved his way back to the house.

  Whenever a knock at the door signalled the return of the drunken son, it was usually the police who Suzanne found standing opposite her. But this time, on the doorstep was instead the angelic-looking painter she had counselled on his landscape back in Montmartre.

  Maurice did not have friends. The thought that he had made an acquaintance was as incredible as it was cheering. The young man introduced himself: he was André Utter. He painted too – or rather, he was training become an electrician; but painting, and Montmartre, were his true passions.46

  Utter had been born into a family of modest artisans whose roots lay in Alsace. His father was a plumber in Montmartre, and as the only son of a couple whose other offspring were girls, the boy was doted on. Great things were expected of him.

  He was a social lad who made friends easily and knew all the right words and gestures to keep them. He was also devilishly charming and the girls in Montmartre loved his easy manner and his smooth repartee. But his good friend Edmond Heuzé, the companion Utter had been painting with when the boys spied Suzanne in Montmartre, always held that Utter was of a serious and studious nature.47

  On reaching puberty, Utter had thrown himself into Montmartre’s art and social scene, enjoying drunken studio parties, experimenting with drugs like hashish and revelling in all the subversive and animated debates to which they gave rise. However, Utter was not merely a shallow dilettante drawn towards the nearest party, but was a shrewd and informed connoisseur of avant-garde art. He studied and read assiduously and could legitimise any new or controversial idea he might espouse with a back catalogue of theoretical and historical knowledge.

  Still, Montmartre’s social scene had taken its toll, and not long after Maurice had returned from his own rehabilitation in Sainte-Anne’s, Utter’s parents had arranged for him to spend some time away from the temptations of Montmartre staying with his grandparents, who owned a house on the Butte Pinson. For an amateur painter, the picturesque countryside softened the blow of leaving Montmartre. And it was in these circumstances that he came across Maurice.48

  Henceforward, Utter became a regular visitor to the Villa Hochard, conversing with Mousis, making polite small talk with Mad
eleine, painting alongside Maurice, marvelling at his talent when sober, humouring him when he was drunk; and talking with Suzanne – passionately and at length, about art and life and Montmartre.

  Utter was charming to many, but he in turn was particularly struck by Suzanne. She was stunning for a woman around 40, both ‘Amazon and fairy’, he told friends later, with a smooth, immaculate complexion, a tiny waist and intense blue eyes.49 She crackled with energy and when she laughed, she did so heartily, fully, as though she did not know the meaning of restraint. Nor had she been spoilt by her time modelling for renowned artists; she looked as fresh as ever. And she was extraordinarily kind. She made little of the time when, one cold winter afternoon at the end of 1906, she noticed a man about Maurice’s age working at an easel on the corner of the Place du Tertre, shivering with cold. ‘You are mad to stay here in this weather,’ she told him. ‘You are purple! Come on, stop this instant and come with me.’50 She led the man to the nearby restaurant and café of her friend, local landlady Mère Adèle (a former dancer from the Moulin Rouge who had previously run the Lapin Agile), and thought nothing of buying him a steaming glass of fruity, alcoholic grog. She had no idea that the man, an Italian newcomer to Montmartre, would soon make a name for himself as the legendary Futurist painter Gino Severini.

  Utter was sensitive to such gestures. From then on, he and the Mousis-Valadons enjoyed each other’s mutual acquaintance and respect.

  Within a few years of his stay in Sainte-Anne’s, Maurice was producing handsomely, and, benefiting from Suzanne’s experience and contacts, was starting to sell work to dealers like Clovis Sagot, a former clown, and the picture framer Anzoli.51 He had begun by painting the places he knew – the streets of Montmartre, a square in Montmagny, the colour merchant’s shop in Saint Ouen. Then he turned to cathedrals and churches: Notre Dame, Reims, the church of Villiers le Bel. Enriching his paint with moss, plaster and cement, Maurice’s surface was thickly painted and rich in texture. André Utter suspected the material additions to have been inspired by one of the odd jobs Maurice undertook working for a construction company.52 The happy result was some exquisite, atmospheric pieces, which transported the viewer to the very spot depicted, bringing the city and suburbia to life, with the smells of baking and soapy water, the sounds of traffic and bells ringing as shop doors opened, and the sensations of paint-flaked walls and plaster. Maurice’s work was utterly original – and he seemed completely unaware. ‘Is it ugly?’ he enquired anxiously to Suzanne when he had completed his painting of Notre Dame. To Suzanne’s mind, ugliness was synonymous with truth and honesty; there could be nothing more noble. ‘It can never be ugly enough,’ she answered with a smile.53