Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  That year, Suzanne pictured him at his easel, brush in hand, a smart hat posed on his head.10 Recognising him as a master of his craft showed extraordinary generosity on Suzanne’s part. For all her dedication, Suzanne Valadon could not match the success of Maurice Utrillo. His paintings of le vieux Paris, apparently so effortlessly produced, were just the kind of visual reassurance the post-war public craved. But Maurice was unswayed by celebrity and, so long as there was money for drink, relaxed about the price his work commanded. Painting was as natural to him as eating and breathing; he did not consider his skill made him particularly special. What concerned him were the demands and expectations his career imposed. People worried him. He did not possess the social skills to woo and work them like Utter did. The inevitable public-relations engagements inflicted on him by Utter’s management were deeply disturbing.

  Suzanne could feel her son’s tension. Her portrait showed him working, though boxed in by the sharp diagonal of his easel, oppressed by the weight of his own hat. He appeared confined, his facial expression troubled. As an artist, Suzanne saw success; as a mother, she sensed a cornered little boy in need of protection.

  Utter was acutely sensitive to Maurice’s commercial potential, but Suzanne’s portfolio was more problematic. Her work was appreciated by fellow artists, less so by the public. Added to which, she often grew impatient when people requested a meeting, and her responses frequently left her viewers unsatisfied. Maurice was different. Whether he liked his stepson’s style or not, Utter could not fail to see that in the post-war art world, Maurice Utrillo represented a goldmine – ‘the best business prospect this century’, the stepfather gloated.11 Presented with such desirable merchandise, Utter proved himself a first-rate salesman. At the end of 1918, a buyer could expect to pay 30 francs for a Utrillo landscape; at a sale held at Durand-Ruel’s on 24 February 1919, the artist’s La Maison Rose, rue de l’Abreuvoir sold for 1,000 francs.12

  But not even Utter could put a gloss on the nail-biting alcohol-induced plummets that ran parallel to Maurice’s staggering artistic success. In July that year, Maurice again had to be admitted to an asylum, treatment for which Suzanne was grateful to secure funding through an agreement made with Amedeo Modigliani’s Polish dealer, Leopold Zborowski.13

  Having arrived in Paris as a literary student, ‘Zbo’ had subsequently sold books and prints on the banks of the Seine before turning his hand to art dealership. The Pole was a passionate supporter of modern unknowns, at once sensitive to Maurice’s talent and sympathetic to his torment. He was the ideal benefactor and, with contributions from two other dealers, agreed to meet the costs of Maurice’s treatment in return for instalments of canvases.14

  The contact with Zbo was valuable in other ways, too. That August, Zbo conveyed a selection of French artwork to London to appear in the Mansard Gallery at Heals, and Suzanne and Maurice were among the exhibitors.15

  Now, Suzanne’s career was truly flourishing. She submitted Black Venus (1919) to the Salon d’Automne that year, where the work attracted notice and gained her a front page mention in Comoedia.16 Then in November, she participated in a two-week long exhibition of drawings entitled Noir et Blanc at Berthe Weill’s gallery: ‘a great success,’ Weill triumphed afterwards.17

  But once again, Suzanne’s glory was overshadowed that autumn when Maurice broke out of his asylum and headed straight to find Modigliani, who he and Suzanne had come to know through Utter, in Montparnasse. Delighted to reconnect, the companions set out on an impromptu jolly. The men meandered along to a favourite Italian restaurant of Modi’s nearby, where the artist coaxed the landlady into supplying them with food and ample quantities of drink. Soon intoxicated, the pair weaved their way back to Modi’s studio, with Maurice still wearing the slippers he had had on when he escaped.18

  There, with a little prompting, Maurice painted two street scenes off-the-cuff, and Modi immediately bundled them up and carried them over to Zbo, who paid handsomely for the pair. With more cash in hand, the men continued their binge. When they could drink no more, they staggered back to Modi’s studio, falling through the door, whereupon the artist’s mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne, was obliged to put them to bed.

  By the time Modi awoke the next day, his guest had gone – and so had his trousers. Maurice finally returned, minus the trousers – which he had pawned – but proudly clutching several bottles of wine, bought with the proceeds. The binge resumed. At last, Zbo discovered their antics, promptly gained back the trousers, and returned Modi to bed and Maurice to his mother. A few days later, a solemn Suzanne escorted Maurice back to the asylum. As fate would have it, the two friends never saw each other again.

  To everyone’s relief, Maurice’s repeated spells in sanatoriums did not seem to dent his earning potential. That December, the dealer Lepoutre organised an exhibition at his gallery in the Rue La Boétie. Prefaced by a laudatory catalogue, the show was visited by flocks of enthusiastic viewers. The prices demanded were high and, for the family, the interest was thrilling.19

  But for Suzanne, her son’s first major exhibition coincided with another dramatic revelation. Just two days before Maurice’s grand opening, national papers reported a death – that of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

  The news came as an unexpected yet decisive rupture with a past now so distant. Renoir had finished his days in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the South of France, having spent more than twenty years plagued by rheumatoid arthritis. To the end a dedicated practitioner of his craft, he had refused to succumb to his condition, and attempted to paint right into the latter stages of his illness, even when it meant seeking assistance to place his brush in his hand. Renoir was one of the last surviving significant artists for whom Suzanne had posed. With his passing, life ceased defining her as a painter’s model; now, she was an artist.20

  At the end of January, an even more horrific blow was delivered: at just 35 years old, Modigliani lost his life to tubercular meningitis. Devastated, his now-pregnant mistress Jeanne threw herself and her unborn child to their deaths from an upstairs window in her parents’ apartment. Modi was a year younger than Maurice. He had still been visiting Suzanne, sometimes spending the night at the Rue Cortot, just weeks before. The news was apt to send shivers down the spine. Many artists considered the young Modi a genius. It was a tragic loss.21

  Modi had looked up to Suzanne as a mother figure. Indeed, to many younger artists, she was something of a veteran. She had earned her stripes in the art world; the same month as Modi’s death, it was announced that she had been elected on to the committee of members of the Salon d’Automne.22 Her years of experience had fostered profound respect. But with those advancing years, Suzanne was also acutely aware of the more far-reaching changes taking place, of which Modi’s death was merely symptomatic.

  The transformation of her local area since the war was particularly perplexing. For the most part, the twisted streets she had scampered through as a child were still the same; it was just that now, pedestrians had to check for motor cars rumbling past before they crossed the street. The reasonably priced cafés where Suzanne and Miguel had sat with a single drink for an entire evening had grown wise to the remunerative potential of their quaintness. Prices soared, making them virtually unaffordable to all but tourists. Gradually, locals were seen out less and less.

  In the eyes of long-serving Montmartrois, the cost of progress was too steep. This was the fatherland they knew and loved, part of their souls. Fired by nostalgia, Frédé from the Lapin Agile and a handful of other disgruntled Montmartre residents formed the Antigrattecielistes (anti-skyscraper party), a group concerned with local politics. The party’s main political agenda encompassed the prevention of skyscrapers and the establishment of a Free Commune of Montmartre to run alongside the official town council; more outlandish proposals included placing the Butte on a turntable so that all sides would at some point face the sun, insisting that every window box be planted with vines and introducing a nine-month calendar so that winter would be eradic
ated. The party struck just the right balance between political gravity and jocular good cheer for Suzanne to grow impassioned. She was also popular, and soon found herself running as one of a small number of women candidates.23

  Among the group’s opponents were the Dadaists, who presented fierce competition. But the Antigrattecielistes were thrilled when votes were cast in April 1920 and they won. The Montmartrois were proud of their independence and their heritage, and the area was recast as a free town with its own administrative structure. The disadvantaged (particularly artists and children) were the group’s chief charitable causes. The cartoonist Jules Dépaquit became the mayor and other activists included the artist Francisque Poulbot. With such an eccentric and bohemian administration, fundraisers invariably took on an absurd twist, including a mock bullfight and a race contested by the area’s songwriters, women and children, while the work of artist friends was given keen support.24

  The movement was just another of the idiosyncrasies that fuelled Suzanne’s love of Montmartre. It was an amusing diversion with a laudable political incentive, and Suzanne always welcomed an opportunity to socialise. But she could not allow political activity to divert her from her career.

  While the Antigrattecielistes were safeguarding Montmartre’s heritage, Suzanne’s work was on display at the Salon des Indépendants. She had decided to submit the canvas that encapsulated the start of her relationship with Utter, Adam and Eve (1909). ‘A simple format,’ reported Floréal; ‘a solid canvas,’ added Le Populaire de Paris, while La Gerbe esteemed it ‘full of qualities’, and for the Chronique des arts, Suzanne’s ‘confident drawing and charmless ugliness’ reflected Degas’s influence.25 However, by the time the souvenir of the couple’s love affair was revealed to the public, Suzanne had concealed Utter’s genitalia with vine leaves. The threshold of sin had long been traversed; left only were the resultant anxieties.

  As Suzanne reached her mid-50s, the age gap between herself and her lover impressed itself. Utter did not look out of place laughing and drinking among the new wave of fashionable young patrons populating Montmartre’s bars and cafés. But in the same context, to strangers, Suzanne now appeared little more than an eccentric old bohemian.

  Still, her everyday material existence and professional life were undeniably good. Living conditions were more comfortable than she could ever have dreamed possible when she left Paul Mousis, and food was never lacking. In the 1920s, she could afford an English housekeeper, Lily Walton, whose presence gave a flourish of refinement whenever there was a party to host.26 Suzanne was also painting prodigiously and had her first sale at the prestigious Hôtel Drouot in 1920, as well as participating in the Exposition de la jeune peinture française at the Galerie Manzy Joyant.27 Added to which, she boasted an enormous number of friends and acquaintances, many of whom subsequently became patrons. And as always, no matter how close a companion her sitter might be, Suzanne produced honest, unbiased portraits which penetrated to the darkest recesses of her subject’s very soul. ‘Her great merit,’ Berthe Weill explained, ‘is that she never makes a single concession, despite everything. A great artist!’28

  But if busying herself helped numb the insecurities regarding her relationship and age, Maurice’s ongoing fracases with the authorities were less easily ignored.

  In April 1920, Suzanne was alerted that Maurice, who was currently undergoing another spell in an asylum, had become aggressive and violent when a jailer took two of his paintings. He was consequently locked in a cell. Rallying the most influential of her friends, Suzanne quickly launched a campaign for his release. ‘[My son] may be ill,’ Suzanne conceded when she wrote to the Police Commissioner, ‘but he has never been dangerous, either towards himself, or towards anyone else. This is why I beg you to return my son to me. I will care for him myself, and if needs be, place him in a private psychiatric clinic in the countryside.’29

  Before her letter could yield results, Maurice had attempted to slash his wrists.

  Suzanne secured a sponsor for Maurice’s rehabilitation in the Picpus asylum that summer in the form of engineer and inventor Léon Levavasseur, who had developed aeroplane engines and who happened to be a generous art enthusiast.30 Once again, finished canvases were offered as repayment. However, after some months, and following another attempted escape on Maurice’s part, it was concluded that he was still unfit to be granted unmitigated freedom. As a transitional measure, the asylum agreed to release a strapping male nurse named Pierre to watch over Maurice at home.31 The patient responded well to this arrangement. Pierre’s presence gave Suzanne reassurance and before long, a new routine had established itself, which seemed to suit all parties. With her peace of mind restored, Suzanne could work fluidly.

  Besides the Salon d’Automne, the last part of 1920 brought the Exposition Internationale d’Art Moderne in Geneva and a group exhibition at Berthe Weill’s the following spring to prepare for. And about that time, another distraction presented itself for Suzanne, and for Maurice too. It came in the form of a colourful husband and wife whose friendship would radically alter both their lives.32

  Robert Pauwels was a robust and erudite Belgian banker whose financial nous had enabled him to profit from the newly accessible post-war art market while indulging his penchant for modern painting. And wherever M. Pauwels went, his ebullient wife Lucie was invariably by his side.

  An effervescence of prattle and perfume, plump and preened and studded with constellations of gaudy rings and jewellery, Lucie Pauwels was a former actress who had never fully accepted the break with her previous career that her marriage had demanded. ‘I have always been extremely gifted,’ she gushed. ‘If I had stayed on the stage there is absolutely no question that I would have been the greatest actress in France.’33

  Having abandoned her stage name of Valore, Lucie had quickly taken to her new role as Mme Pauwels. She and her husband claimed to ‘adore’ artists, and they attempted to surround themselves with painters at every possible opportunity. Nowadays, Lucie’s ‘stage’ was the couple’s comfortable apartment on the Boulevard Flandrin, which had been decorated with studied elegance, and where once a month they hosted a chic gathering.34 At these events, tea and lemonade were served to a group of carefully selected guests, while music was played, verses recited and deals set in motion. For Berthe Weill, the polite small talk and forced refinement of these parties lacked warmth and intimacy, while the couple’s approach to their art collection was decidedly snobbish.35 But for Suzanne and Maurice, the Pauwelses’ interest was at once flattering and financially transformative.

  As Lucie remembered it, the couple had first come to Montmartre to look for the mother and son they had heard so much about the previous winter. By the beginning of 1921, the Utter family had become regular guests at the Pauwelses’ teas. Lucie judged Utter ‘a very attractive man, full of health, but despicable’, and already in possession of a wandering eye.36 But cultivating his acquaintance was a necessary rite of passage if a person wished to gain access to Suzanne and Maurice, both of whom Lucie instantly decided that she liked and admired immensely. For all her reservations about Suzanne’s skills as a mother, Mme Pauwels decided that Mme Utter should become her dearest friend.37 Before long, Maurice’s and Suzanne’s canvases were adorning the walls of the Pauwelses’ cherished abode.

  ‘The memory that M. Utter and my son, M. Maurice Utrillo, as well as myself, retain of our charming hosts and your most interesting reception is as pleasant as it is vivid,’ Suzanne wrote to thank Lucie on 21 February 1921 – a polite bourgeois response to a dignified bourgeois social gathering.38 Suzanne’s career now saw her moving in a very different social circle to the one into which she had been born. Drawings of her peasant mother or poor serving girls toiling to scrub clean a malnourished youngster had been superseded by prim society portraits of well-heeled ladies and powerful businessmen. When patrons like the Pauwelses called a tune, it was worth learning to dance.

  Suzanne’s social efforts paid off. That year, s
he participated in a record number of exhibitions and reviews began to accumulate. In the summer, Berthe Weill scheduled a joint exhibition of Suzanne’s and Maurice’s work. However, as so often before, professional glory was obscured by personal shame. As the opening approached, Maurice broke free from Pierre’s supervision, and Suzanne was contacted with the news that he had been arrested in the Place de la Bourse for indecent exposure. He was subsequently moved to a prison de la santé, which was felt to be better placed to offer the care he required. From there, he was transferred once again to Sainte-Anne’s.39

  Conscious of the suffering he had occasioned, Maurice wrote a sheepish note to Berthe Weill expressing his regret that he had not come to the exhibition: ‘I am truly sorry not to have been able to visit it, since my mother’s canvases were on show and it is always an immense pleasure for me to see the admirable works that she paints with so much skill, because she is an artist of the first order, who paints with such sincerity.’40

  After some weeks at Sainte-Anne’s, Maurice was moved to a clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine where he was assigned to a Dr Delmas.41 Finally, at the end of the summer it was agreed that Maurice should be returned to Pierre’s care, and, as an additional precaution, sent to spend time in the countryside away from the temptations of Montmartre until he readjusted to life outside the clinic. Arrangements were made for Maurice to stay with an acquaintance of Utter’s named Marien Pré, and his family, in the commune of Anse in the Rhône department on the Saône river, not far from where Utter had convalesced when he was injured during the war. Suzanne was only too pleased to visit and to spend time and paint once again in the countryside with which she and Utter had both fallen in love during the war. While in Anse, Suzanne produced a series of landscapes, capturing the buildings and countryside she adored, with studies of orchards and stables. And during the course of the year, she worked prolifically, producing a number of portraits, including a study of Maurice, one of her great-niece Gilberte (both of which appeared at the Salon d’Automne), and, in particular, a portrait of her husband’s family.