Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  When she could dismiss her anxieties about Maurice’s drinking, Suzanne had to admit that life was extraordinarily good. Her determination to focus on her blessings was reflected in the monumental Joy of Life (1911) that she submitted to the Salon d’Automne in October 1911. The conceptually complex work showed four nude or semi-clad women stretching, bending and crouching in various poses in a shady grove, while a naked young man stood to one side watching them, his arms folded. The human figure in a landscape setting had been a popular subject with painters since the second half of the 19th century, and Suzanne’s work gave a nod to Manet’s great Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863). The picture was deeply informed by art of the past, and it also contained hints of Puvis, Gauguin and Matisse’s work. But in many respects, the painting was a profoundly personal piece, and a clear reflection of Suzanne’s current situation. With the mature, shapely women and the slender young man, physically, Suzanne could only be drawing on herself and Utter. But while he was cast in the role of voyeur, the female presences, three with their backs turned, another facing him but concealing her eyes in a melodramatic pose, appeared oblivious or untroubled by his stare. In a defiant visual statement, divorcee Suzanne dismissed society’s judicial scrutiny and refuted the notion of the male gaze defining woman.42

  Suzanne’s work and relationship brought her deep fulfilment. But as the year drew to a close, Maurice’s dependence on drink was becoming more pronounced. The apartment they had occupied in Montmartre had proved cramped and uncomfortable, but their spacious country dwelling felt isolated and remote from the city they all loved so dearly. Nobody was completely satisfied. Something had to change.

  It did – and it came in an unexpected form. In 1910, Émile Bernard, the devout painter Suzanne had first met through Lautrec, had decided to vacate his studio apartment in the building Suzanne used to occupy in the Rue Cortot. Now, the proprietor was looking for a new tenant. The prospect of living back in Montmartre, not squeezed into a box at its foothills, but high above Paris in the place where she had been the happiest, was thrilling. Maurice would have to be supervised of course, but he had always been more at ease in Montmartre and his psychological state played a key part in his problems. Both relieved and excited, Suzanne eagerly agreed to the move.43

  When the family arrived at their new home with their belongings, their eyes alighted on a notice that the previous tenant had fixed above the door:

  He who believes not in God,

  Raphael or Titian may not enter.44

  This was the start of a new chapter for the family. Disregarding the warning, the Unholy Trinity opened the door and stepped inside.

  CHAPTER 12

  New Horizons

  Vau mielhs tener un lapin que segre una lebre.

  (It is better to hold a rabbit than to chase a hare.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  Number 12, Rue Cortot comprised a sprawling warren of dimly lit passageways and bright ateliers. Émile Bernard’s former studio was in the opposite wing from the apartment where Suzanne and Paul Mousis had begun married life and it had valuable advantages. Arriving in front of the huge arched doorway, Suzanne could find the concierge in the tower-like structure on the left, and on the right, the wooden staircase which led to her new home. Mounting the creaking steps to the first floor, the muffled sound of a dog barking urgently could be heard on the other side of a nearby wall, while a heap of coal on the landing signalled occupancy. From the landing, the door on the left opened into the family’s hallway, where approaching the window, Suzanne could gaze down at a spectacular panoramic view over the rooftops of northern Paris. There was a dining room, a cosy little bedroom of three metres squared, perfect for Maurice – and all the other living space the family could desire. Then from the hallway, two further rooms and a short corridor led to the engine room of the apartment: Suzanne’s atelier.2

  With its huge skylight, wooden slatted floor and rectangular windows looking out over the treetops, the whole studio felt as though it were a ship coasting through the air. Light flooded the room and the view across Paris was breathtaking. All around, a jumble of wood and canvas completed the furnishings: there were easels; part-finished paintings stood up against sturdy cupboards; and here and there, a chair or coffee table served as a temporary resting place for jars of turpentine, tubes of paint, brushes and palettes.

  With Madeleine shuffling around keeping house, Suzanne settled into her new surroundings and quickly became as relaxed and comfortable as if she had been born there. Once the dogs had been walked in the morning, the working day saw Suzanne, Utter and Maurice busily engrossed in their own corners of the apartment. Every so often, a misplaced tube of paint or a borrowed brush triggered an explosive row, with abuse being hurled unrestrainedly at one artist by the other. When the equipment had been returned, peace was restored and industry resumed. Evenings were regularly interrupted by Maurice’s ungainly reappearance after one of his drinking binges, either alone or in the custody of a police officer from the station in the Rue Lambert. When the blood and vomit had been mopped up, the revelation that he had yet again drunk the proceeds of a sale provoked more fiery disputes. But another masterpiece was never far away and it invariably redeemed him in his mother’s eyes. It was a tumultuous existence, but for the most part, everyone was content. In her old age, Madeleine had her home and her family around her. Maurice got to be with the mother he adored and Montmartre was on his doorstep, while Utter had Suzanne and the bohemian existence he craved. And Suzanne had art and love and freedom.3

  She celebrated the household with a Family Portrait (1912), a piece she had been planning for some time. The sombre picture depicted the four of them. Maurice was seated in the front, his head resting on his hands, his gaze lost and melancholy. Behind him, Madeleine looked a hunched, wrinkled and sullen secondary character, while at the far side, Utter appeared the tall and dignified adjunct to a family group centred on mother and son, and he looked out of the picture frame optimistically. And at the centre of them all was Suzanne, her hair centre-parted, her hand clasped to her chest, fixing her viewer in the eye in knowing complicity.

  Madeleine was ageing. The new family arrangement prompted Suzanne to look at her mother afresh. She produced several studies of her that year, one seated outside with a stone wall and foliage behind her, a cloth in her hand indicating a pause from some domestic task; another showed her sitting indoors, a cup and saucer by her side, her gnarled hands clutching her glasses, her eyes still a striking shade of clear blue, but now watery and framed by pink lids and wrinkles.

  Suzanne’s respect for Madeleine had grown more profound as she matured. With Maurice’s precarious oscillation between intense productivity and incoherent drunkenness, her mother’s presence was a comfort. There were other supportive figures in Maurice’s life: for instance the kindly César Gay, a former officer who had served in the corps of the guardiens de la paix and who now owned the restaurant the Casse-Croûte in the Rue Paul-Féval where Maurice was a regular.4 ‘M. Gay always gave me a warm welcome,’ Maurice remembered, ‘and made it easier for me to create my art.’5 There was also Marie Vizier, the buxom blonde who ran the cabaret adjoining Père Gay’s, À la Belle Gabrielle, and with whom Maurice even enjoyed a brief and casual romantic liaison. In Maurice’s eyes, Marie was like ‘a mother, always there whatever the circumstance’.6 Both Père Gay and Marie Vizier were happy to let Maurice paint on their premises, and occasionally Marie agreed to let him stay the night. But she was not a woman to trifle with; she had no hesitation in beating Maurice and kicking him out whenever he drank too much.

  Though Père Gay and Marie Vizier offered support, Suzanne was conscious that, having known Maurice from birth, Madeleine was the only other person who truly understood him and could share the load. And by early 1912, there was an additional grievance as far as Maurice was concerned: the arrangement with Libaude.

  Libaude had craftily assured himself exclusivity on Maurice’s work. But with Maurice seeing canva
ses as coupons for drink, the more liquor he needed, the more he was forced to produce. Before long, Libaude was inundated. ‘Since the beginning of April,’ the dealer complained, ‘you have been bringing me a painting every other day. It is far too much and I fear that this hasty production will be detrimental to your career. I believe one can only build a serious reputation for oneself with careful work.’7

  It was Suzanne and not Maurice who replied to the reprimand, irritated by the dealer’s tone and rejection. By way of a threat, she proposed to reveal what her son was being paid.

  Libaude did not deem her letter worthy of reply. He condescended to write to Maurice instead: ‘I have received a threatening letter from Mme Valadon […] So she speaks of divulging what I pay you? […] I feel I must tell you that should this threat be carried through, I would cease buying paintings from you.’8

  Concerned about her son’s livelihood, and about the lengths to which his need for alcohol would drive him, Suzanne had wisely kept a stash of Maurice’s early paintings hidden in the apartment. However, now, when there were no new canvases to trade, Maurice had taken to riffling through the house and stealing his own works. Realising that her strategy was no longer effective, Suzanne resigned herself to Libaude taking the paintings. Gathering up the last of the portfolio, she grudgingly offered them to the dealer. He took the lot for a pitiful 100 francs, leaving Maurice with little more than 50 sous (approximately 2 francs 50) for each canvas.9 At the time, that money would not even buy Le Figaro for a month.10

  By now, Maurice’s most extreme and manic episodes of drunkenness were becoming more regular. Suzanne decided that something had to be done. She simply must seek help from outside.

  After one particularly frightening and aggressive alcohol-induced outburst, Suzanne turned to her friend, the art critic Adolphe Tabarant, and begged him to intervene; Libaude must be persuaded to pay for Maurice’s condition to be treated, in return for some canvases. But when he was approached, the dealer only grew more annoyed. He argued that there had never been a formal agreement between himself and Maurice, merely a moral obligation, and in any case, Maurice’s continual breaching of their understanding hardly inspired in him the confidence to reach into his own pocket. Shortly after the confrontation, Libaude wrote to Maurice, enquiring maliciously: ‘I am surprised not to have heard from you, are you unwell?’.11

  Anxious that his name should not be tarnished by his declining assistance, Libaude spread the rumour that it was Suzanne who was opposed to the idea of Maurice being admitted for treatment. When word reached Suzanne, she was livid. Not wasting a moment, Suzanne, Utter and Maurice jumped in a taxi and raced to confront Libaude. The dealer’s reception was farcical; he treated the whole interview as a joke, clearly relishing the power he wielded over the family. His refusal to help was determined. But eventually, Libaude grumbled that Dr Élie Faure – whose medical and artistic authority he could hardly dispute – had urged that it would be for everyone’s benefit that Maurice be admitted to the care of the Dr Revertegat at his clinic in Sannois. At last, Libaude grudgingly agreed to pay the 300 francs-a-month fees. Maurice was admitted to the clinic.12

  As she had when Maurice was sent to Sainte-Anne’s, Suzanne had to relinquish control and was left to wonder how her son was spending his days. But this time she did so knowing that Maurice was in the best possible hands. Suzanne could now turn her attention back to her own career and to her friends.

  Degas was in particular need of assistance. Ageing, increasingly cantankerous and plagued by failing eyesight and deteriorating health, his lot only became more burdensome to him when he learned that his home and atelier on the Rue Victor-Massé were to be demolished. At 77, Degas was an esteemed master of French painting – and he was homeless.

  Suzanne saw less and less of her mentor these days, but she knew him better than many of his friends, several of whom tried to convince him to move to the serene and leafy area of Passy, where Berthe Morisot had lived. When Suzanne learned of the project, she was aghast. ‘He would have died of boredom!’ she exclaimed.13 Degas might have been old and set in his ways, but around him he needed movement and life – and Montmartre. Suzanne took matters into her own hands. She found Degas a studio on the Boulevard de Clichy, for which he was profoundly grateful.

  The demolition of Degas’s atelier was symptomatic of a broader shift under way in the capital. ‘It is a bit of historic and artistic Paris which is disappearing,’ lamented L’Intransigeant when the painter’s home had been demolished that May.14 The Paris Suzanne had come to know and love was changing, and Montmartre with it. But Suzanne could not allow nostalgia to divert her attention. To make a living, her career also demanded ongoing maintenance.

  As a professional artist, Suzanne’s year was now structured around the key exhibitions. Little happened in the summer, but the Salon d’Automne inaugurated the season in October, the Salon des Indépendants took place in the spring and around that there existed all manner of exhibition possibilities if an artist were shrewd and proactive. That May, Maurice’s admission to the clinic at Sannois coincided with Suzanne’s participation in a group show, Graphik, at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. Exhibiting abroad was a sure sign of success and a cause for self-congratulation. But separated from Maurice, it was difficult to remain solely focused on work.15

  At least her son’s reports assured her that he was comfortable and well looked after. The leafy suburb of Sannois was already known to Maurice and Dr Revertegat’s clinic was a well-managed establishment, familial in its welcome and attentive in its care. The doctor, Maurice said, was ‘of the elite’ and friendly.16 He went on: ‘excellent food, still, sterilised water to drink, very comfortable bedroom’.17 Patients were allowed to smoke; coffee was served after lunch and at four o’clock in the afternoon. Maurice was even given permission to leave the grounds so that he could paint in the roads and countryside around the clinic. In one study, the straight, tree-lined Avenue Rozée where the clinic was located, with its blue-grey iron fence, appeared sunny and serene. The environment seemed to suit him, he responded well to the treatment and there was talk of him being released as early as July. But there was no telling if Dr Revertegat’s sterling efforts would withstand Maurice’s return to Montmartre society. Arriving at a crossroads, it was impossible for Suzanne not to speculate as to what the future might hold.

  Something of her angst found an outlet in the huge The Future Unveiled (1912) which she produced that year. Stretched out naked on a divan in a richly coloured interior, Suzanne painted a curvaceous blonde looking down to inspect a set of cards that a crouching brunette in a blue dress had laid out in a circle on the floor. Fortune-telling had been practised for thousands of years when Suzanne executed her composition, but cartomancy (using playing cards to make predictions) became popular in the 18th century. Typically employed in a less serious context than the traditional Tarot, standard playing cards were nevertheless said to offer remarkably accurate forecasts. As interest in the occult and spiritualism mounted in the second half of the 19th century, playing cards lent themselves to the more informal and bohemian social gatherings which drew Montmartre’s artists and writers. According to the traditional interpretations of cards, the future anticipated by Suzanne’s spread was loaded with meaning. In the centre was the ace of hearts, signifying both the enquirer’s emotional foundations and their physical base or home. The cards surrounding it highlighted wealth, prosperity and material success, though not, the seven of clubs warned, without challenges or indulging in frivolous luxuries, while the ace of diamonds foretold of splendid but erratic good fortune. The ace of spades hinted at exciting new adventures whose outcome was yet unknown. Significantly, the abundance of kings in the middle reflected different strains of male energy. And in her hand, the reader held up the queen of diamonds: a mature and forceful woman, though at times a bossy one.18

  That July, Maurice was released and returned to Suzanne’s care. Suzanne left nothing to chance. She did everything she
could to choreograph her son’s seamless reinsertion into everyday life. It was agreed that the family, along with Maurice’s melancholy chemist friend, Richmond Chaudois, and all their dogs, should take a holiday. If Maurice were literally given a change of perspective, Suzanne reasoned, it would surely set him on a more favourable path when he returned to Paris. So it was that one summer evening in 1912, the party made their way to the Gare de l’Ouest and boarded the express train to Brittany via Conquet, where they planned to take a boat to the remote island of Ushant.19

  The northern French coastline of Normandy and Brittany had soared in popularity during the second half of the 19th century, when it became increasingly attractive to holidaymakers. The English had first started the vogue for sea bathing in the early 19th century, and from the mid-1840s, a rapidly expanding rail network helped spread the trend and facilitate access to the coast. France’s northern coast became so popular that by 1866, travel writer Adolphe Joanne could say of the Normandy seaside town of Trouville: ‘It’s the rendez-vous of sick people who are well, it is Paris, with its qualities, its foibles, and its vices, transported for two or three months to the edge of the ocean.’20

  Brittany had much to offer the Parisian in search of distraction. ‘Around the mountainous massif,’ one 1911 guide to Brittany proclaimed, ‘unfold, now desolate heath, now fertile plains, down to the magnificently jagged coastlines so revered by tourists.’21 But even before the seasonal tourist industry rose up, artists and writers had been haunted by the rugged coastline, the dramatic scenery, the picturesque regional costumes and the mystical folklore in Brittany. For many painters, the rocky landscape at the mercy of the elements was beautiful in its weathered honesty. James Abbott McNeill Whistler had been drawn there in the autumn months of 1867. Jules Breton, the academic painter admired by Vincent van Gogh, had fallen in love with the region in the mid-1860s. And John Singer Sargent had braved the inclement summer of 1877 to create his celebrated Oyster Gatherers of Cancale (1878). By the time Suzanne travelled there, the trip to Brittany had become something of an obligatory pilgrimage for any self-respecting artist.