Renoir's Dancer
Page 24
But Brittany was an especially poignant holiday destination for the Valadon family. Its granite terrain called to mind the landscape of the Limousin, while the thriving rural customs recalled Madeleine’s heritage. Furthermore, Suzanne’s maid Catherine was one of the many Breton girls who had migrated to Paris to find work in domestic service, subsequently introducing the Valadon house to her stock of regional traditions, customs and tales. Brittany was a natural place for Suzanne and Maurice to take a holiday.
After a train journey of several hours, the four adults with their suitcases, dogs and easels, stepped out on to the platform at Conquet in a cloud of steam and a spirit of expectation. ‘The trip to Ushant was epic,’ André Utter recalled later.22 Upon arriving at Conquet, the party were obliged to travel by boat the eighteen miles to the isolated little island which marked the north-westernmost point of France.23 At under six square miles, the rocky landmass had a population of less than 3,000 when Suzanne and her family took their holiday there. Ushant was the home of a thriving fishing community, as well as its particular breed of small black and brown sheep. But it was predominantly for its treacherous seafaring conditions that it was known. With its fast moving tidal streams and razor-sharp rocks, Ushant was the eerie graveyard of unknown sailors and lost vessels – the land of shipwrecks and terror, Maurice mused.24 Observing the jagged rocks, perilous cliff faces and barren fauna, secretly Maurice could not help wishing himself home in Montmartre. True, it had its unsavoury characteristics, but at least they were familiar. However, the plan had been made to stay for several months, and it was unlikely to change. And a letter addressed to Maurice forwarded from Paris was sufficient reminder of the capital’s less appealing traits.25
‘I learned that you were going to leave Sannois to travel to Brittany,’ Libaude wrote accusingly. ‘May I remind you before you go, that from now on, I would like to receive exclusively canvases with dimensions of 25 […] It is understood that you will deliver six canvases a month and that you will produce nothing for anyone else. I think we see eye to eye, I hope that we will continue to do so for a long time; it will be profitable for you as well as for myself.’26
Maurice, Suzanne and Utter spent the summer erecting their easels on the clifftops or looking out over the heathland, and they worked – as best they could – from nature. Maurice produced a series of melancholy landscapes, reflections of his mood as much as his surroundings. Suzanne, who was less experienced where landscape was concerned, found the trip to Brittany a valuable opportunity to focus on the genre while discovering new countryside. She produced studies which bore the imprint of Gauguin’s influence. But with the dogs needing constant supervision, and removed from their well-equipped and familiar working environment, the trio’s productivity diminished. ‘It was a circus,’ Utter remembered candidly, ‘how were we supposed to work in such conditions?’27 By October, the family were relieved to board the train which would carry them back to Montmartre.
Arriving home in time for the Salon d’Automne gave an immediate focus. Suzanne submitted The Future Unveiled, which was remarked upon, and Maurice also exhibited some work. In the same month as the Salon d’Automne opened, Suzanne and Maurice both participated in the group show organised by Clovis Sagot in Munich at the Galerie Hans Goltz, where pieces by Van Gogh and Picasso were also on show. If the seasonal festivities were more spartan than Suzanne might have liked, the Salon des Indépendants the following spring gave cause for hope. But by the time the New Year came around, Suzanne was feeling the financial strain of living by her art. Her work was admired by fellow artists, but it was not commercial in the same way as Maurice’s. And he was at the mercy of Libaude’s avarice.
Maurice had been made to pay for his Breton jaunt with some extra paintings inspired by his trip as part of his existing ‘contract’. He had no choice but to consent. Libaude also insisted that Suzanne sign the canvases for her son, since her writing was much neater. Then in March, came a critical letter demanding that Maurice take more care to ensure the consistently high quality of his paintings. Libaude was constantly at pains to remind Maurice which of them wielded the power. ‘You know that it would serve neither of us to deviate from the gold-paved route on which I have set your painting,’ Libaude warned. ‘That would certainly happen if you sold your canvases to dealers who could not keep them and who had to move them on as quickly as possible in order to survive.’28
Ironically, the member of the family with the highest earning potential was caught in an impossible stalemate. Utter did his best to smooth the fractious relations between Maurice and his dealer, but Libaude would only be pushed so far. Suzanne came to a sobering realisation: the family urgently needed more money. The house in Montmagny would have to be sold.
The loss of her only asset might have been distressing were it not for the anaesthetising effect of daily life as an artist and her relationship with Utter. Reconnecting with her niece, Marie-Lucienne Merlet, also offered a pleasant distraction that year. Marie-Lucienne now signed herself Marie Coca, for she had married, and had become a mother. Suzanne had always been fond of her half-sister’s daughter, and she produced a portrait of Marie Coca with her daughter Gilberte, which she finished in time for the 1913 Salon des Indépendants that spring. Seated erect in a high-backed armchair, Marie Coca was shown looking out of the picture frame at an undefined point, while paintings on the wall behind her made a ‘picture within a picture’ – a device borrowed from Degas. At Marie Coca’s feet, Gilberte presented a diminutive version of her mother. Having bribed her great-niece to keep still with sweets, Suzanne seated the little girl on a cushion, her right hand mirroring her mother’s, her left possessively gripping the head of a doll which she nursed in her lap. The child fixed the viewer in the eye so as to drive home the artist’s point – life, Suzanne demonstrated, was cyclical.29
That May, Suzanne had further cause to feel optimistic. Libaude, convinced that Maurice’s work represented a still little-known gold mine, put all his energy – and his funds – into hiring Eugène Blot’s gallery on the Rue Richepanse for two weeks. Filling the exhibition space with over 30 canvases, he was certain he would make a fortune. He was wrong – only two of Maurice’s pieces sold. The silence in the press was deafening.
But that same year, Suzanne was more fortunate in her professional contacts. She was welcomed to participate in a group show at Berthe Weill’s tiny shop on the Rue Victor-Massé.
The bespectacled, round-faced manager of the Galerie B. Weill was the same age as Suzanne and she shared the artist’s fierce determination.30 Weill had been born to a lower middle-class Jewish couple whose modest means obliged her to become apprenticed at a young age at the antique dealer Salvator Mayor’s shop. Once the patron died in 1897, Weill moved into the fine arts trade and started a gallery, initially with one of her six siblings. However, Weill was an incorrigible risk-taker; from her partnership with her brother, in the early 20th century, she channelled all her resources into opening her own gallery. By the time she met Suzanne, she had become one of the foremost champions of the avant-garde and a particularly ardent defender of Fauvism and Cubism. She was one of the first dealers to spot Picasso’s talent. His canvases immediately excited her, and she promptly filled her gallery with his work. As an enterprising woman with Jewish heritage, Weill, Suzanne knew, possessed all the qualities to antagonise Degas. But the dealer was intelligent and discerning, single-minded when she sensed she had happened upon new talent, and shrewder than many of her male counterparts. As a single woman operating – and succeeding – in a man’s world, she had much in common with Suzanne. Suzanne’s introduction to Berthe Weill marked the start of a deep friendship based on honesty and mutual respect.
With the dizzying course of professional peaks and troughs, and with the financial pressure eased by the sale of the house in Montmagny, the family decided that they sorely needed another, more uplifting break. They longed for somewhere warm, more exotic but without the additional complication of a lingu
istic hurdle to overcome. So that summer, when the art market experienced its annual slump, Suzanne, Maurice and Utter boarded an express train to Marseille where they took a steamboat to the Corsican capital of Ajaccio.
With its Mediterranean climate and relatively easy access from mainland France, Corsica had long been a popular travel destination with the more anthropologically curious Frenchman.31 Once French became the official language in the mid-19th century and the introduction of steamboats facilitated travel, the cultural bond between the island and mainland France grew even stronger. The ‘natural beauty of Corsica and its incomparable climate’ made it a favoured destination among travel writers.32 With its mountainous, granite terrain and cuisine enriched by an abundance of chestnuts, there was much to remind Suzanne of her early years in the Limousin. But it was primarily the island’s difference to anywhere she had yet experienced that struck her.
Corsica was a revelation. The vivid colour, the light and, particularly, the sun, so intense and all-consuming (‘a sun unlike any other,’ Suzanne enthused), bewitched her.33 As the family travelled north from Ajaccio, Suzanne gradually discovered more of the island.
She was overcome by the scenery and the vistas, ‘a jumble of houses, walls, gardens,’ she observed.34 Corsica nurtured her nascent affection for landscape. Once they arrived in Corte and the Unholy Trinity began working alongside each other, marvelling at the scenery from behind their easels, Suzanne felt inspired to paint ‘a true, objective view of a town’.35 In an unprecedented work, she captured the entire city of Corte in a sweeping panorama. Taking a high vantage point, her canvas showed the viewer down over the city. Not a detail was missed; Suzanne carefully painted each individual stone, every window in all the little buildings, in a meticulous style reminiscent of the luminescent religious paintings produced by Albrecht Dürer in the 16th century. From the intense sunlight which gave the outlines of rocks and mountains clearer definition, to the bold colours, with the bright green trees, the clear blue sky and the potent yellow and orange of the landscape – everything about Corsica conformed to Suzanne’s aesthetic preferences. As subject matter, it allowed her to capitalise on her skills as a draughtsman. Besides the epic View of Corte (1913), she painted several Corsican landscapes, including a scene depicting the church at Belgodère. The visual elegance of fishermen manipulating their nets on the beach particularly struck her. It was as though everyday work had given rise to a sort of elaborate dance. The bodily contortions brought about by domestic tasks had always fascinated Suzanne, and she began a series of rapid sketches which she felt certain she could work up into a breathtaking canvas once she returned to Paris.36
Suzanne was not alone in her appreciation of the island. Even Maurice seemed to cheer. ‘Picturesque and pleasant to explore,’ he commented.37 He found the food spicy (not a common complaint of the herb-infused Corsican cuisine, save of the spiced tomato purée used in many dishes).38 But he nevertheless thought the meals decent, and certainly superior to many he had tasted in Paris. That Ajaccio and Calvi were also revered wine-growing areas, known for their full-bodied and aromatic wines, only made the dining experience more palatable. His enthusiasm was buoyed even further when, quite by chance, the trio bumped into Maurice’s painter friend Augustin Grass-Mick at their hotel. Formerly an enthusiastic participant in Paris’s bohemian life, the decoratively trained Grass-Mick had received a commission to embellish a local château near Belgodère. Though he and Maurice had enjoyed many a drunken sortie together in Montmartre, Grass-Mick had left Paris with his wife for the South of France earlier that year, so it was a fortuitous and pleasant encounter.39
The whole family felt fulfilled by their holiday. Each was disappointed when it came to an end. But as Suzanne, Utter and Maurice boarded the boat at l’Ile Rousse one rainy September day, which would ferry them to Toulon so that they could catch the train back to Paris, all three felt refreshed, revitalised and ready to showcase their talents as the capital’s exhibition season resumed. With the Salon d’Automne approaching in November, there was much to do.
As soon as they were home, Maurice fell upon Montmartre’s café culture like a starved man. He was often found at the Casse-Croûte or À la Belle Gabrielle. Père Gay, who was paternally fond of Maurice, allowed him to let a room with him and his wife for the inevitable nights when he became dangerously intoxicated and was unable to stagger home. Aware of his talent and his self-destructive tendencies, Père Gay and Marie Vizier conspired in Maurice’s interest, keeping him restrained on their premises and denying him wine until he produced a painting that could then be discreetly sold to amateur art enthusiasts for Maurice’s profit. He also painted some decorative pieces for Marie’s establishment, and on one occasion, became so taken with the idea of surprising her that he redecorated the walls of the toilet with a floral landscape. The landlady was furious and promptly ordered Maurice to restore the walls to their former glory.40
Gay also hung Maurice’s canvases on his walls. One day, a dealer named Henri Delloue happened to drop in and spotted Maurice’s work. Enchanted, Delloue showed Maurice’s paintings to a fellow dealer and friend, M. Lepoutre, who was equally enthusiastic and took three canvases. Still, a handful of canvases hardly placed Maurice in a strong enough position to revolt against Libaude, who had again written to remind Maurice of his obligations towards him shortly before his Corsica trip. But that autumn, Maurice received interest from a dealer who made Libaude uneasy, and with good reason. M. Marseille could guarantee a 400 franc monthly retainer in exchange for a regular supply of canvases. Finally, Maurice did not have to pander to Libaude’s whims. Thanks to Marie Vizier, César Gay, Delloue, Lepoutre and Marseille, Maurice’s work was becoming better known and his reputation mounting.41
It was no surprise to Suzanne that her son’s alcohol consumption increased in direct proportion to his success. And he would not be found a wife, no matter how hard Suzanne tried to nudge him towards many of the inoffensive young models she hired. But professionally, Maurice was prospering – and nobody was more surprised or bewildered by the interest than himself.
Suzanne’s submission of Little Girl at the Mirror (1909) to the Salon d’Automne in November was clouded by Maurice’s readmission to Dr Revertegat’s care, a move rendered imperative by his declining health. While the rest of Montmartre toasted the arrival of 1914, Maurice remained in detoxification. Not a drop of alcohol passed his lips that New Year’s Eve.42
Dr Revertegat was a skilled practitioner who rekindled the hope that Maurice might yet be cured. It was an optimistic backdrop as Suzanne put the finishing touches to the monumental The Casting of the Nets (1913) worked up from the studies she had produced in Corsica. She intended to submit the piece to the Salon des Indépendants that spring. Suzanne again took Utter as her model, depicting his nude figure in three different positions as he manhandled a net against a mountainous backdrop with sea and rocks at its base. As the three versions of Utter worked the prop, every muscle could be seen, each flexion detected, as Suzanne lingered over the dramatic bodily contortions and subtle spasms engendered by the task. The attempt to conceal Utter’s genitalia with the rope of the net merely drew the viewer’s eye more insistently to the censorable area. It was a magnificent and innovative work; links could be found with Gauguin, Henri Matisse – whose The Dance (1910) had caused a sensation at the 1910 Salon d’Automne – and Frédéric Bazille’s Fishermen with a Net (1868), which was exhibited posthumously at the same show. Although the large-scale striving towards classicism gave a nod to art of the past, the vibrant colours and scrutiny of a male nude by a female painter were daringly contemporary.43 Within the static, two-dimensional space of a flat canvas, Suzanne expanded time, evoked movement and celebrated the physical dexterity of the human form. The piece paid silent homage to Degas, who had been affected by the photographic studies of movement made by scientist Etienne-Jules Marey and photographer Eadweard Muybridge.44 The press took notice, and Suzanne found herself singled out in Lemouzi and
La Presse, and she was mentioned on the front page of L’Aurore.45
While Utter cast his lover’s net across the walls of the Salon d’Automne, the battle with Libaude ground on. The dealer wrote to Utter that spring, flexing his muscles and stating that Maurice could be relied on neither to produce work consistently nor to be granted freedom from specialist supervision. In March, however, more trust was placed in Maurice, when the business tycoon-cum-art critic and collector André Level, from the Compagnie des Docks et Entrepôts de Marseilles, headed the first big sale of his work.46 In 1904, Level had launched La Peau de l’Ours, a speculative business venture that invested in the work of modern and contemporary artists. His backing was auspicious and the sale proved an extraordinary success. But Libaude’s threatening missives continued into the summer, when Maurice had to resign himself to another spell at Dr Revertegat’s. A second sale organised at Delloue’s initiative at the Hôtel Drouot in June was a bitter disappointment compared with the first. But one blessing came that July, when Libaude, due to family pressures, was finally forced to released Maurice from his ‘contract’. The break, which in the past would have filled Suzanne with dread, was wonderfully liberating. They now had the reassurance that Maurice’s work could sell, and well, and they no longer needed Libaude’s assistance to achieve that.47