Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  Despite Utter’s absence, Maurice’s internment in Villejuif (the asylum for patients with pronounced psychiatric difficulties) and the still-recent loss of her mother, Suzanne continued to work. Under the circumstances, it was all she could do; total absorption was her greatest coping strategy. By focusing intensely on what was in front of her, she was able, if only for a short while, to take the edge off her pain.

  That year, Suzanne produced several nudes, and still lifes with richly coloured flowers and landscapes. She drew pairs of dancers, girls trying on clothes, the Sacré-Coeur as seen from her window in the Rue Cortot; all unremarkable activities, frivolous even, or scenes she saw on a daily basis – all manageable in their mundanity.

  To fill the void left by her disbanding family, Suzanne threw herself into her social life; she had spent enough time around Toulouse-Lautrec in days gone by for something of his modus vivendi to rub off. Stories of her increasingly outrageous behaviour began to circulate. She was reported to have been seen wearing a coat adorned with carrots and carrying a bouquet of lettuce leaves trimmed with snails.30 Then she was spotted out with a menagerie of animals including a goat.31 Neighbours complained of raucous parties being thrown at the Rue Cortot at all hours, with guests arriving with armfuls of food and wine, and a firm resolve to have fun. At 50, Suzanne had established herself as one of Montmartre’s timeless eccentrics.

  The social noise dulled the echo of solitude. But there were practical complications of living alone that simply could not be drowned out.

  With her mother gone, Suzanne now had more to do to stay on top of the housework in addition to tending to her career. She was grateful when, from time to time, one of her young models named Gabby was willing to help out. Gabby was a plump and capable blonde, with an aquiline nose, an easy disposition and a kindly heart. As Suzanne came to know her better, it occurred to her that Gabby possessed all the qualities she would hope to find in a daughter-in-law should Maurice be persuaded to take a wife.

  By the time Maurice was released in November, Suzanne had formulated what she considered to be an ingenious plan. By the end of the month, a wedding date had been set and Suzanne had started issuing invitations. Still to reacclimatise to life outside the clinic, where he had shared living quarters with inmates so deranged that they even ate his paints, Maurice seemed accepting of his mother’s notion. However, Gabby proved more level-headed. The implications of a marriage to Maurice soon struck her and she pulled out of the union. If disappointed, Suzanne could hardly have been surprised. Nor could she stay cross with Gabby for long; her son was far from ideal husband material. There was not sufficient animosity for Gabby to stop modelling for Suzanne.32

  In December, the bloody battle of Verdun finally concluded, before France was gripped by one of the coldest winters in living memory. On 24 January 1917, Le Figaro reported that the temperature had plummeted, with lows of –7° recorded in Dunkirk.33 For the soldiers, the journalist sympathised, ‘the terrible cold adds a mortal peril to those already being faced’.34 The paper tried to remain optimistic; the sky was clear, after all, and civilians and soldiers would far rather ‘the coldest of temperatures than the fog, rain and mud’ they had been forced to endure for the last two months. But nobody could ignore the sharp edge the weather gave to already testing circumstances. With food and fuel in short supply, Parisians hunkered down with their mobilised loved ones in mind and survival their sole objective. Suzanne, however much she might be suffering, could not steer her thoughts from how much worse this bitter winter must be for Utter. She knew her friend the art critic Adolphe Tabarant to be both well-connected and persuasive. She wrote to him in February 1917, by which time the temperature had dropped still further, with many parts of France experiencing conditions of –20° or less.35 Suzanne begged Tabarant to see if he could call in a favour or two to get Utter moved to where the environment was more humane.36

  Suzanne had learned through Tabarant that the army were drafting in artists to paint camouflage sheets intended to be thrown over ship decks, tanks and aircraft to conceal them from enemy view. With Utter’s proficiency as a painter, he would surely be an ideal candidate for such a post. But despite repeated appeals to Tabarant (which she peppered with pleasantries in the form of updates on her own work), Suzanne seemed unable to sway fate in her husband’s favour.37

  Beyond a respite from the cold, the spring brought little to restore morale. The catastrophic offensive ordered by General Nivelle at the Chemin des Dames in the Aisne saw thousands of men meet premature deaths. Broken and weary, desertion and revolt were the soldiers’ last resort. It was impossible for Suzanne to know at any given hour where Utter was, what he was doing, whether he was even now risking his life fighting the enemy, or if he was endangering himself becoming involved in the mutinies sweeping through the divisions. The uncertainty was torturous.38

  Exhibiting work alongside Utter and Maurice at Berthe Weill’s gallery that spring at least gave Suzanne a focus, and involvement in a group exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune early in May gave a continued distraction with which to try and absorb herself.39 The flourishing Galerie Bernheim-Jeune had been established in Paris in 1863 and had helped promote the Impressionists in 1874. Now, brothers Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune had forged the gallery a prestigious reputation as an acclaimed forum of avant-garde art.40 It was a valuable contact for Suzanne. ‘In times of war,’ Le Carnet de la Semaine noted, ‘the support of the Rue Richepanse [the gallery’s address] is invaluable to young artists.’41 The author went on to praise Suzanne’s ‘crisp drawing’, while in Le Carnet des Artistes, she was singled out, named and, significantly, not bracketed together with what the reporter dismissed as a ‘whole batch of women’s work’.42

  But then just as Suzanne’s career was gathering momentum, on 17 June she received some sickening news. It was the message she had most been dreading: André Utter had been shot.

  Suzanne learned how her husband had received a bullet wound to his chest, so close to his heart that it was decided that it would be too dangerous to attempt to remove it. He would have to recover with it still in place.

  Frantic, Suzanne immediately boarded a train to Meyzieu near Lyon, so that she could go to Utter at the military hospital to which he had been rushed.

  As she sat anxiously by her husband’s bedside, Suzanne consoled herself that César Gay would watch out for Maurice in her absence. The days passed, and gradually, to her relief, Utter began to recover. Soon, the convalescent was considered well enough for the couple to be able to go out and explore the surrounding countryside. Their shared discovery of the cherished homeland of Beaujolais wine growers reaffirmed their love for each other. Suzanne even found herself able to paint while she was there. Meanwhile, she wrote regularly to Maurice, keeping him informed and urging him not to drink.43 ‘André Utter is a brave man and I envy him,’ Maurice admitted sorrowfully in a reply penned on 1 August 1917. ‘Your place is in the Louvre; mine is in an asylum.’44

  Suzanne returned to Paris briefly with Utter at the end of the summer, visiting Berthe Weill to negotiate the sale of some work while they were away from the capital.45 Even when art did sell, it was seldom reaching high prices during the war. Finances were stretched, so much so that André Utter even attempted to resume contact with Maurice’s roguish dealer, Louis Libaude.46 Suzanne needed all the sales she could generate, for she planned to stay on in Belleville with Utter a little longer. The medical care was good and she found herself entranced by the region.

  Once the couple had returned to Belleville, Suzanne continued her correspondence with Maurice, she always begging him to have pride and not to drink (at least not so much), Maurice insisting himself unworthy of her love and begging forgiveness for his behaviour. He claimed to have come to despise Montmartre and in many of his former friends he now saw only enemies.

  But Maurice’s tragic existence was not the only arm of suffering to reach out to Suzanne from Paris. On 28 September 1917, the attention of Le
Figaro’s readers was arrested by one dramatic leading article on the front page:

  M. Edgard [sic] Degas has just died. He enjoyed huge renown in the art world, and he leaves to posterity an oeuvre which justifies this success.47

  An announcement made in two short sentences pulled the last stabilising support from under Suzanne.

  The article went on to discuss Degas’s work and success, and mention was made of his mordant wit. The author was particularly amused by Degas’s response when a younger artist spoke enthusiastically about wanting to ‘arrive’: ‘In my day, Sir, one did not “arrive”.’

  The piece concluded with recognition of Degas’s unshakeable loyalty to a few, select friends. It mentioned Bartholomé, but not Suzanne. However, she did not need a journalist’s acknowledgement to know that she was included in the group. Degas was her mentor, her tutor and her friend. But he was more than that: more brutally honest than a friend, more emotionally invested than a tutor, more patiently redressing than a father. Without Degas, Suzanne knew she would not be where she was, nor have achieved all she had. That so much energy, such life, talent and intellect could just suddenly disappear, was unfathomable.

  As Degas was lowered into his final resting place at the Cimetière de Montmartre, the last of Suzanne’s respected parental figures was lost to her forever.48

  Whenever life became more turbulent than usual, Suzanne was inclined to self-reflect. To her, that meant self-exploration in paint. The events of 1917 prompted her to paint herself in a head and shoulder portrait, bare-breasted but desexualised, her frame and bone structure firm and well-defined, her features still exquisitely beautiful and radiating youth. For all the trauma she had experienced, Suzanne’s self-portrait appeared blissfully serene. It was as though she had found an inner strength on which to draw, a tenacity which could withstand the crumbling world around her. The woman depicted was one who had made peace with herself and who now knew just what – and who – was important to her.

  The New Year 1918 unfolded and Suzanne’s upset was eased somewhat by spending as much time as possible in the countryside with her husband. In her absence, Maurice was becoming desperate. Added to which, January was again bitterly cold, with the northeastern town of Remiremont in the Vosges department recording a low of –23° on New Year’s Day.49 Food was in short supply and the dreadful hum of German bombers overhead had become a familiar feature of everyday life. Parisians were living in constant fear, their exhausted bodies fuelled only by adrenaline.

  For Maurice, life had become too much. It was all he could do to write to the dealer Henri Delloue, begging for help. He attempted to channel his thoughts into a coherent letter:

  I am in an unhealthy nervous state, the victim of physical, intellectual and moral depression, the most alarming affliction. I absolutely must be cared for. I cannot really work. I have written to the woman who knows me best, asking her to write to you and explain the state of degeneration in which I find myself. I cannot speak highly enough of your goodness, but I must be treated in a clinic. That is the rigour required.50

  At the time, Delloue had ample concerns of his own. He had two sons on the front and had just been mobilised himself. But Maurice’s plea was heartbreaking. He agreed to help.

  On 1 March 1918, Maurice was admitted to a clinic in Aulnaysous-Bois in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, north-east of Paris, to be treated by a Dr Vicq. His internment came just in time: on 23 March, the Germans unleashed Big Bertha on the capital.

  The 420mm Big Bertha mortars had been developed in secret. They could shoot out a shell of more than a ton in weight and at a range of over 12km. So huge was this weapon that it would have taken 36 horses to move it. It wreaked devastation wherever it was aimed, giving Parisians a bitter taste of life on the front line. The end of Paris suddenly seemed a very real possibility.51

  Elsewhere the war ground on. Every day, the papers reported more French losses at the front. In May, growing resentment triggered strikes across France.

  However, in July, the Allies’ victory at the second Battle of the Marne hinted that the tide might be turning. The people of France started to hope again. Still, for Suzanne, life remained frustratingly unsettled. All she wanted was to be peacefully back at home with Utter in the Rue Cortot. To add to her pains, at the end of August, Maurice escaped from the clinic and fled to César Gay’s.52 By the time an epidemic of Spanish flu swept through France in October, claiming an average of 350 Parisian lives a day, Suzanne, along with the rest of the French population, was at breaking point.53

  On 11 November 1918, Parisians awoke to find the sky overcast, and there was a chill to the air. Citizens were poised in anticipation. For the last few days, word had it that the long-awaited announcement was imminent. But after four years of hostilities, people scarcely dared believe it was true. Now, a crowd such as had never been seen had gathered expectantly on the streets of Paris. Then, at 11am, something miraculous happened: the cannon of peace fired its first shot. All through the city, church bells began to chime and, slowly, the sun ventured out from behind the clouds. The war was over.54

  Parisians exploded in a veritable frenzy. Citizens filled the streets, where impromptu singing and dancing began. La Marseillaise was sung out with gusto, Madelon was joyously rendered, while hastily formed bands struck up military marches. Houses, cars, windows – all were festooned in flags and bunting. Strangers embraced, women cried tears of joy and children waved tricolore flags with delight and indefatigable arms. Girls threw their arms around soldiers’ necks and kissed them as they passed, taxis decked in flags rolled along with men still muddy from the trenches clinging to them, waving tricolores or swigging bottles of beer. Horns, drums and applause rang out. The whole of Paris buzzed feverishly with elation – like a school class surprised by a recess bell they had not been expecting, Le Figaro remarked.55

  Suzanne too was ecstatic. Afterwards, people distinctly recalled having seen her among the throng in the Place du Tertre, singing, cheering and wearing nothing but a wrap of tricolore flags to hide her modesty.56

  Before the end of the year, Suzanne could behold the cause of her celebration. She was alerted by whoops of delight from giggling girls as one of the finest-looking young soldiers strode into Montmartre: André Utter was back.57

  And after several years away, Utter had returned to Paris determined. He had helped his country win the war. Now, he was going to ensure that the Unholy Trinity became the most successful artists in post-war Paris – and he was adamant that this time, nothing would stand in their way.

  CHAPTER 14

  What Money Can Buy

  Gnio pà de feito sei lendemo.

  (Every party has a morning after.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  Post-war France was a nation conflicted. On the one hand, citizens had to assimilate the scale of devastation left by the war and ponder the monumental task of reconstruction. One point three million soldiers had lost their lives, 3 million had been disabled and 200,000 civilians had died in the fighting.2 Many buildings were ruins, rotting corpses and shelling had rendered much agricultural land unusable, while countless railways, roads and bridges had been entirely destroyed.3 When the value of the franc plummeted, taxes could only go up. But at the same time, the lingering aftertaste of winner’s glory gave rise to an overriding spirit of optimism. France basked in the euphoric glow of its long-awaited freedom. Life had proved precarious – now, people were determined to enjoy it while they could.

  Where leisure and entertainment were concerned, escapism was the order of the day. The arrival of African-American soldiers had kindled a taste for the exotic.4 These foreign guests introduced Paris to jazz, whose lively rhythms and infectious melodies set battle-scarred toes tapping. Jazz seemed the perfect antidote to post-war malaise. People felt alive again, and an influx of Americans now acted as the perfect ambassadors for the music that was fast becoming a national phenomenon. Tempted to Paris by the promise of sexual liberation, gastronomic e
xcess and cultural riches, fast-talking Yankees spilled out on to Montmartre’s café terraces.5 America was here to stay and its influence was far-reaching. Meanwhile, though many Frenchmen still clung to the notion of separate spheres, in defiance of traditional notions of femininity women now sported bobbed haircuts, short skirts and cloche hats, while flat chests were all the rage.6 In Paris’s bars and cabarets, carefree fun was clients’ raison d’être. At last, anything seemed possible and aspiration led the way.

  Before long, the art world had been swept up in the prevailing mood of good feeling and plenitude. Berthe Weill recorded heavy debts incurred during the hostilities. But soon, her diaries were filling up with dazzling new exhibitions which, while not always profitable in terms of sales, were nevertheless more numerous and diverse than they had been in years.7 Paintings were a fashionable commodity once more. And while the fresh tranche of nouveaux riches were not sufficient to reconfigure France’s social structure, their nascence did make a notable impact on the art world.8 Foreigners proved particularly hungry for French art. It was just the aesthetic resurrection André Utter had been banking on.

  The year 1919 was wonderfully productive for Suzanne. Utter’s return and his keen encouragement of her work saw her creativity flourish. She bloomed in her husband’s light. The result was an unprecedented outpouring of paintings. She produced considered still lifes with abundant dishes of fruit, loving studies of her cat Raminou, landscapes, and in keeping with the fashion for all things black, a series of paintings of a shapely mulatto woman, in which her brush seemed to relish the undulating curves of the model’s silky skin. People on the Butte whispered that Suzanne’s sultry temptress was sleeping with Maurice.9 But Maurice’s true passion lay elsewhere.