Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  Maurice was still drinking, of course, but by his mid-twenties, Suzanne had come to accept this as an inconvenient foible that needed supervising, rather than an evil that could be quashed. Every time Maurice came home drunk, she would nurse him back to sobriety – always short lived – and then the whole cycle would start again.

  One day, Suzanne was in her studio in the Rue Cortot when, out of the window, she spotted Utter in the street below working on a painting. She called down to him cheerfully and asked how the piece was progressing. He returned the greeting. She continued, saying that she would love to see what he was working on, and he was flattered – why didn’t he come up with his canvas for a moment? In fact, she also had in mind a painting for which she needed a male model. Maurice would not do for this piece, but Utter would be perfect. Would he do it? Utter agreed.54

  But somewhere between the talking and the critiquing and the posing, there was a kiss – a first kiss. And then another. And no one ever quite established how things progressed after that, but the kiss was such that nothing would ever be the same again.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Name of the Father

  Foudrio no bèlo làto per so prenei en lou diàble.

  (You need a hefty plank if you want to take on the Devil.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  ‘We want to glorify war – the sole hygiene in the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas that kill, and a contempt for women.’2 Readers of Le Figaro were horrified by the lines printed on the paper’s front page on 20 February 1909.

  Poet and painter Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto seemed designed expressly to antagonise. ‘The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, daring and revolt,’ the Italian declared. ‘What good is there looking back as long as we have to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible […] We want to demolish the museums, libraries, fight moralism, feminism and all opportunistic and utilitarian weaknesses,’ the author continued.3 The manifesto extolled the beauty of speed and the supremacy of the machine. The future, Marinetti affirmed, was movement and technology.

  Within hours, Le Figaro’s offices were flooded with complaints.

  Marinetti’s proclamation was extreme, but it was symptomatic of a more generalised urge to look forwards and view the world afresh, free from the trappings of nostalgia. New takes were in vogue and that encompassed novel interpretations of themes previously considered sacrosanct – including religion.

  Although religiosity had declined during the 19th century, by 1900 a more widespread yearning for spirituality in the face of mass consumerism had found an outlet in contemporary slants on the practice of religion and the significance of faith. Alongside the archetypal religious paintings expected at the Exposition Universelle in 1900 – exemplified by William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s grandiose Regina Angelorum (1900) – there had been a notable influx of works which offered an original twist on the ancient Scriptures. Eugène Carrière’s Crucifixion (1897) took a familiar theme from Christian iconography and veiled it with that mist so characteristic of late 19th-century Symbolism. A humble, contemporary setting gave religion greater poignancy in Léon Lhermitte’s Supper at Emmaus (1892), which showed a Christ-like figure appearing, not in a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but in a recognisable French peasants’ kitchen. Then there were countless contemporary mother-and-child pictures, providing a modern spin on the traditional Madonna and child theme.4

  Suzanne had the pioneering ventures of a number of naturalist and avant-garde painters behind her when she was inspired to produce her own monumental reworking of a religious theme in 1909. Since the doors of the convent of Saint Vincent de Paul had closed firmly behind her as a girl, Suzanne had shied away from the church. Any religious picture she produced was bound to make a statement. And Suzanne felt so compelled by the idea she now had in mind that she decided to use oils.

  Though Suzanne worked in paint, she did so only sporadically, always gravitating instinctively towards drawing. Historically, academic teaching drilled students to acquire a mastery of line before they progressed to using colour, so in process if not in style, Suzanne’s natural inclination reflected the rigour of the traditional teaching methods used to mould male art students. It bespoke her serious approach to her work.

  Building on her previous year’s drawings of bathers, that spring she executed a study of the poet Adrienne Farge, reclining nude. The piece was reminiscent of Ingres in the fine handling of line to bring out the contours and features of the face. There were also several drawings of nudes, including Nude at Her Toilette (1909) and Three Nudes (1909). But the current piece called for something bold.

  From everyday scenes of children or bathers at their washtubs, aided by maids and grandmothers, often in an implied interior setting, Suzanne now chose to transport her nudes outside and to formally pose them. But not only that: she planned to depict a man and a woman to give her own interpretation of the iconic tale from Genesis 3, the Temptation. She would paint Adam and Eve, as yet unashamedly naked, with Eve contemplating the fateful fruit of knowledge. For a woman to paint a nude heterosexual couple showed extraordinary daring; it was simply not done. But the piece was audacious on a personal level, too. The figures poised on the precipice of sin, their naked bodies already entwined, were not just models – they were Suzanne and Utter.

  Holding herself elegantly, her hair flowing down beneath her waist, Suzanne reached for an apple on the tree next to her, while Utter gently took her wrist in an ambiguous gesture – was he controlling or protecting, encouraging or dissuading? Would she yield to temptation? Seeming to float on air, their bodies moved together, onwards, upwards, outwards, their legs and feet mirroring each other, their hands interlocking behind their backs – hidden from view, Suzanne and Utter were already exploring each other’s bodies. In the balanced composition and the classical proportions in a landscape setting, Suzanne’s painting drew on what she had learned watching Puvis when she posed for his The Sacred Grove of the Arts and Muses (1884). Furthermore, the contrast between the luminosity of the sky and the dark, twisted branches of the tree were not without reference to earlier versions of the theme. Copies of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve (1531) were readily available in a culturally active capital like Paris.5 But there was no serpent to be seen in Suzanne’s painting – the couple, Suzanne confessed, were caught in a timeless paradise and they were both responsible for their sin.6

  Suzanne’s painting of Eve reflected the rush of freedom she felt in Utter’s presence, while the close attention she gave his face betrayed her fascination and infatuation. Utter was 23; that year, Suzanne turned 44. She had never been more blissfully happy. Utter was young, attractive and kind; he was creative, energised and inspiring. And above all, he loved that she painted, and eulogised her work. His enthusiasm gave her confidence. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. So urgent was her need for this man that she even stole herself away from the rest of the family on her birthday to write him a hasty note.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she scribbled, ‘I forgot yesterday that I have my model on Friday and Saturday, so I shall have to postpone our visit to the museum until next Tuesday. If that is possible for you, come and pick me up as planned. Fond wishes, Suzanne Valadon.’7

  Suzanne and Utter had arranged a trip to the Musée Gustave Moreau. The late painter had bequeathed his stately townhouse and its contents to the city of Paris after his death in 1898, on the condition that the building be used to perpetuate his work. The museum had opened in 1903, drawing its exhibits from the vast collection of over 1,000 oils and 7,000 drawings that Moreau had left behind.8 The Symbolist painter’s work took inspiration from mythology, so it was natural that Suzanne and Utter’s conversation should turn to Moreau as she perfected her contemporary reworking of the Temptation and equally fitting that the idea to visit the gallery should take form. But, swept up in lust and excitement, Suzanne was forgetting her existing commitmen
ts and responsibilities. Mousis’s financial support meant that she had no longer had to rely on just her mother, Maurice and the goodwill of her maids whenever she needed someone to pose; now, she was in a position to pay professional models, just as artists used to hire her. She had a trusted handful of girls on whom she called regularly, such as Ketty, a shapely young woman with a glorious mane of lustrous long hair. It was a luxurious position in which to find herself, and Suzanne was acutely conscious of the dramatic trajectory her life had undergone. It would take something significant to make her overlook her assets or disrespect a girl plying her former trade.

  Utter’s physical presence was irresistible, his creative support and encouragement addictive. He was also a direct channel to the contemporary art scene. Utter was intimate with key proponents of avant-garde art and he moved in the same social circles as the Fauves and the Cubists. These were the people at the forefront of Paris’s art scene. In the early 1900s, Fauves like Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy were exploding paint on to canvases to produce flat patterns in blazing colours. Soon after, Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were overturning conventional systems of perspective. The handful of friends who saw Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), the canvas Picasso had been working on in his pokey studio at the unlikely crucible of avant-garde art that was the Bateau Lavoir, were left in no doubt that major artistic shifts were under way.9 Utter had also made friends with an eccentric Jewish painter, newly arrived from Italy, named Amedeo Modigliani, whose work, good looks and drunken binges were already raising eyebrows, even in Montmartre. Then, besides the artists, Utter knew all sorts of influential critics (including Francis Carco, André Salmon and Gustave Coquiot) and dealers, as well as writers and poets, like Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. With such a cast, evenings in the Lapin Agile were as creatively charged and vibrant as the gatherings when Manet and his disciples had congregated at the Café Guerbois nearly 50 years earlier. The dramatis personae and the setting might have changed, but the talk was as passionate and revolutionary as ever.

  On Utter’s arm, all this was accessible to Suzanne. Suddenly, a door had been opened on to a thrilling new world, where anything and everything seemed possible. All at once, her creative life became exciting again and inspiration flowed. It was as if her art had received a shot of adrenaline and her soul had been reborn.

  ‘One of fate’s unexpected twists caused her life to be renewed,’ Suzanne explained of herself, writing in the third person years later in reference to her meeting with Utter.10 That was as much due to his connections as it was to his love and support.

  Painting now became Suzanne’s raison d’être. ‘From the day she met me,’ Utter boasted, ‘she gave up drawing and engraving almost entirely in order to paint.’11 ‘It was only then that she began painting,’ he insisted on a separate occasion. ‘All her painted work dates from 1909.’12 The claim was somewhat inflated, but even Suzanne had to admit that a shift in focus had taken place. The year she fell in love with Utter, her painting took flight. Besides Adam and Eve (1909), she felt drawn to the themes of self-reflection and femininity in Nude at the Mirror (1909) and Little Girl at the Mirror (1909). Then there was the bold Neither Black nor White, or After the Bath (1909), and, in particular, Summer (1909). With her lover as model, Suzanne produced sketch after sketch of André nude, but drawing was now primarily just a means to a painted end.

  However, Suzanne’s painting was more than just an outpouring of unbridled passion on to canvas. With Utter’s encouragement and contacts, Suzanne began to conceive more seriously of her art as a career which could buy her independence. Painting would always be an emotive exercise, but she now developed a more businesslike approach to its marketing and its management. Encouraged by her lover, Suzanne decided to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne, which ran from 1 October to 8 November.

  The Salon d’Automne was born in 1903, when the conservative policies of the official Salon prompted yet another group of artists to seek a more liberal exhibition forum. Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet were instrumental in the Salon d’Automne’s formation and their creative originality reflected something of its ethos. It owed its uniqueness to its role as a showcase for experimental art and, particularly, for its inclusiveness of drawing, sculpture and decorative arts, as well as painting. Bolstered by the endorsement of several respected names (notably Renoir), the Salon d’Automne quickly established itself as one of the foremost spaces of relevant contemporary art.13

  Suzanne was jubilant: she was already basking in Utter’s love and inspiration when her painting Summer was accepted for the Salon d’Automne. Her canvas made the front page of Gil Blas. ‘Seven ladies!’ trumpeted Louis Vauxcelles when he reviewed room 12 of the exhibition.14 ‘The fairer sex has triumphed’ – though he admitted that the works on show clearly set these women apart from the exhibitors at the Salon des Femmes Peintres. Suzanne’s canvas was commended as being ‘quite well painted’. But for Suzanne, the crowning glory was that, with some persuasion, Maurice had also agreed to enter two canvases, and to everyone’s delight, one (a bridge of Notre Dame) was accepted.15 Mother and son were now exhibiting together, and as Suzanne’s most adoring admirer, Maurice signed his canvases ‘Maurice Utrillo V’ (having been grudgingly persuaded that Maurice Valadon or M U Valadon would cause viewers too much confusion). For Suzanne, the year finished with a surge of pride. This was true happiness.

  Meandering hand-in-hand beneath the turning leaves in Montmagny, drawing close and laughing like children between abandoned palettes and easels in the studio of the Rue Cortot, or stealing time in a discreet corner of a dimly lit bar in Montmartre; to Suzanne and Utter, it was as though they truly inhabited the Eden of Suzanne’s picture. When they were together, nothing else mattered. Suzanne felt like an adolescent again.

  Still, she could never fully dismiss the niggling awareness of how much she risked by continuing the affair with Utter. When she was with him, she was indescribably happy. But she was compromising the whole family’s security and the duplicity was exhausting.

  Edmond Heuzé recalled an occasion when he joined Utter on one of his visits to the Rue Cortot. The pair and Suzanne had been joking together when heavy footsteps were heard mounting the stairs to the apartment. From their pace and weight, they could only belong to one person. ‘Hide!’ Suzanne hissed, ‘It’s Degas!’ Suzanne hurried the men into a cupboard. Her affair must not become public knowledge; it was better to avoid all encounters which might arouse suspicion. No sooner had Utter and Heuzé scrambled out of view than Degas entered – just as Utter was overcome with the irrepressible urge to sneeze. An explosion erupted from inside the cupboard, and Degas flung open the door to reveal the giggling youths. ‘You need two of them now, do you?’ he muttered darkly to Suzanne.16

  The episode roused snorts of laughter once Degas had left. But Suzanne knew that she was playing a dangerous game. Finally, one day, Suzanne and Utter were surprised by a far less objective party: Maurice.

  In his autobiography, Maurice said nothing about how he had caught his mother and his best friend in each other’s arms. But all those who knew him reported how deeply it shook him. In fact, as far as Heuzé was concerned, it was the sight of the mother he idolised and the friend three years his junior in a passionate embrace that tipped Maurice into the realm of confirmed alcoholism.17

  Tossed between the senses of betrayal, jealousy and confusion, Maurice’s whole world was upended. The discovery was sufficient to upset the fragile equilibrium of his delicate psychological state.

  But while Maurice wrestled with his tumultuous emotions, there was a more consequential showdown in store. Eventually, Paul Mousis heard of his wife’s affair, and when he confronted Suzanne, only to become convinced of the adultery, he flew into a furious rage.

  Latterly, their relationship had hardly been idyllic; Mousis offered safety and stability, but he could never comprehend the finer points of Suzanne’s artistic concerns. For his part, M
ousis had begun to resent his wife’s escalating demands for money. He considered taking on Suzanne’s entourage of Madeleine and Maurice, with all his problems, to be nothing short of heroic. After all he had suffered, Mousis fumed, this was how Suzanne repaid him. It was outrageous. The unspoken truth was that for a bourgeois male, it was also deeply humiliating. In the class to which Mousis belonged, to be made a cuckold was the ultimate disgrace. That Utter was practically a boy, and a painter, merely compounded the shame and magnified Mousis’s anger. Seizing paintings, sketches, brushes and palettes, Mousis shooed Suzanne towards the door, forcing her to dodge the tools of her trade as they were flung out after her.18 In the tsunami of artist’s equipment, fine canvases were ripped and slashed, delicate sketches torn. But Suzanne did not care. As one door slammed behind her, another opened. It led to freedom and more happiness than she had ever dreamed possible.

  Breaking free from the claustrophobic confines of bourgeois marriage, Suzanne flew into the open arms of her liberator, André Utter. Now, everything moved quickly; Madeleine and Maurice were made to ready themselves for another move. From the carefully measured order of a dignified bourgeois home, Suzanne, her new family and their dogs moved to a chaotic little artist’s apartment at 5, Impasse de Guelma in Montmartre. It was a small, brand-new building with a huge courtyard, the whole space having been designed to offer moderately priced lettings for artists. Two studios on the second floor had been taken by Georges Braque. The artist Raoul Dufy had rented space on the first floor; as, coincidentally, had another painter Suzanne had met before – the Italian Gino Severini. The rooms were basic and cramped and residents were constantly aware of the comings and goings of their neighbours. Suzanne was in her element.19