Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  Friends distinctly remembered being interrupted every now and then by an unscheduled visit, whereupon they would open the door to find Suzanne beaming. Her hair was now greying and cut with a fringe, her still-clear skin creased with laughter lines, and in the winter she wore a cape pulled round her petite shoulders. She would thrust armfuls of gifts through the doorway towards her recipient.68 Or else she would issue an invitation to a dinner or party, either in Montmartre or, if her guest could free their schedule, in Saint-Bernard. There were alfresco luncheons, dinners at expensive restaurants and once, friends recalled, even a midnight supper party in a cemetery. The food was invariably delicious and the wine of the very finest quality.

  During the spring and summer of that pivotal year, professional ascent and personal anguish again ran parallel – but this time, both were sugared with fiscal abundance. Suzanne had fewer exhibitions scheduled than the previous year, when barely a month had passed without a show. However, the venues in which she now presented her work were chosen with care and her paintings were attracting more and more critical acclaim.

  Maurice’s ongoing troubles had a habit of dampening Suzanne’s moments of professional glory. He spent much of the spring of 1924 in a sanatorium at Ivry-sur-Seine.69 But there was good news too, for both him and Suzanne, in the form of a joint exhibition to be held at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in the summer. The novelty of a mother and son exhibiting together turned the show into a major piece of cultural gossip. Though Mme Valadon’s handling was occasionally ‘a bit heavy’ Comoedia critiqued, she always remained true to her conception of beauty. Meanwhile, ‘the painting of M. Utrillo is the triumph of instinct to the service of an imagination which only needs a street corner, a church, a patch of sky or a humble wall to work’, the same journalist declared.70 ‘A certain melancholy pervades the work of both artists,’ assessed L’Intransigeant, perceptively; ‘in Valadon’s case it is more bitter, in Utrillo’s, more resigned.’71 However, on the whole, reviews were favourable and the exhibition a resounding success.

  The very notion of a working-class female living by her brush would have been unthinkable when Suzanne first went to Puvis seeking support. Now, she had truly arrived. The significance of her achievement was not lost on seasoned artists and critics. And in the year of that great exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune, her friend, the art critic Adolphe Tabarant, resolved that a banquet should be thrown to mark how far she had come.72 Tabarant booked La Maison Rose, a rustic, salmon-coloured hillside tavern in Montmartre that Maurice had painted, and invitations were issued for what promised to be an unforgettable evening.

  For centuries, banquets had been thrown as a way of uniting large numbers of people for ceremonial occasions, and in 1908, the banquet arranged by Pablo Picasso in honour of Henri Rousseau had firmly established such events in the art world as the most fashionable way to mark an important celebration.73

  Suzanne’s banquet was greeted with enthusiasm. The guests included the cream of Paris’s artists, such as Georges Braque, as well as writers and critics like Florent Fels, Francis Carco, Gustave Coquiot and André Warnod. Staff at La Maison Rose knew just the touches to guarantee a sensational evening, with tables set with pristine white cloths and napkins, and vases of beautiful flowers – by now Suzanne’s great weakness. The spread was as sumptuous, the company as engaging and the conversation as stimulating as could be found anywhere in the capital. It was, Utter remembered, ‘a banquet worthy of comparison with that of Douanier Rousseau’.74

  ‘The Parisians will never trade a throne for a banquet,’ King Louis-Philippe famously proclaimed.75 Suzanne, it seemed, did not have to choose. That night, she was the queen, the art world’s most esteemed figures her loyal subjects. She was as the Woman with White Stockings (1924) that she painted that year, and in which many people believed she had depicted herself: a voluptuous female, mature in age but young in spirit, and dressed and posed provocatively. Heavily made up and confident in her sexual magnetism, she sat in the same regal chair in which Lily Walton had posed so primly, but unlike her predecessor, she sprawled over it erotically. Suzanne’s ‘queen’ was a lower-class woman elevated to sovereignty at her very own banquet, and thus a woman of her time.76

  But behind the veneer of flamboyance and success lay deep and dark cavities that it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide. Little did Suzanne know at the time, but as she left La Maison Rose that night and stepped out into the lamplit street, drunk on happiness, she edged just a little closer to the realisation of her worst fears. For in the months to come, Suzanne was about to see her relationship, her home and even her son’s life compromised in the most appalling of ways – and this time, she would be powerless to countervail.

  CHAPTER 15

  In and Out

  Vau mielhs rire a la chabana que purar au chasteu.

  (It is better to laugh in a hut than to cry in a château.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  Suicide and self-harm were regular occurrences in the art world. In 1890, Vincent van Gogh had shot himself in the chest. Eleven years later, Picasso’s heartbroken friend Carles Casagemas had shocked his companions by taking his own life. More recently, the tragic suicide of Jeanne Hébuterne when she learned of Modigliani’s passing remained freshly imprinted in artists’ minds. Many creative types flirted with death. Suzanne herself had been heard to threaten suicide when she stood to lose something she loved. But words were distinct from actions. Neither suicide nor serious instances of self-harm had ever struck in Suzanne’s immediate circle – until now.

  It had been hoped that keeping Maurice under close surveillance once he returned home to the Rue Cortot would be sufficient to ensure his safety. The hypothesis proved ill-judged.

  One morning, Suzanne awoke to find her son’s room empty. The sickening realisation hit her: he had escaped. Suzanne became frantic. Summoning Utter, she began to search everywhere she could think of. Maurice was nowhere to be found. Two interminable days passed, and then there was a knock at the door. The policeman who stood in the entranceway gripped Maurice by the arm. Beholding her son, Suzanne’s initial relief quickly turned to horror – his head had been bandaged up and blood seeped through the dressing.2

  Maurice, it transpired, had been found drunk and was taken to the police station. Thrown into a cell, he became frenzied at the thought of returning to an asylum. Like a cornered quarry, panicking, he hunted for a way out. Realising he was trapped, he resorted to repeatedly smashing his head against a wall. The injury was acute.

  Suzanne hurried him inside and for the next few weeks, became his personal nurse, patiently caring for him, cleaning him and encouraging him to speak. Then as soon as he was considered fit, she arranged for him to be driven to Saint-Bernard to spend the rest of the summer recuperating.

  Saint-Bernard held all the ingredients for an idyllic existence. There was a glorious garden to tend (even if it did take an hour to fill a watering can from the well), and it inspired Suzanne to paint numerous still lifes of flowers, her most cherished and patient models. There was the fast-flowing river to fish in and plenty of well-stocked land on which to hunt. Hares, pheasants, trout and all sorts of fresh produce found their way to the Utter family table. With fresh milk available locally, Suzanne experimented with making her own cheeses. In the springtime, the nearby meadows filled with a carpet of dandelions, attracting those local children brave enough to hazard the wrath of the resident geese. Maurice, who loved animals, adored the geese, calling them his ‘yoyottes’, and he spent hours tenderly stroking them. Then, when night fell, all would become still, with only the piercing cry of an owl or the distant chug of the night train passing to cut through the silence. That was when Maurice worked best; solitude was a familiar friend.3

  During the day, there were usually people coming and going; it was how Suzanne preferred it. She liked to have the house amply staffed by domestics; they offered a comforting reminder of the trajectory her life had taken. With country walks all around and th
e atmospheric backdrop of the château, Saint-Bernard was the perfect venue in which to entertain guests, too. Suzanne and Utter urged friends from Paris to visit as often as possible. The Coquiots, the Karses, Utter’s family; the corpulent, cardigan-wearing painter Maurice de Vlaminck, a former music hall violinist, writer and bicycle enthusiast beneath whose redoubtable physique and booming voice lay a gentle giant who abhorred alcohol – everyone was welcome at Suzanne’s castle. Besides the Parisian guests, the painter Antonin Ponchon, who ran a gallery in Lyon and had a house nearby, often came to call on Maurice. And there was one particularly prominent visitor – Édouard Herriot, the Mayor of Lyon.4

  Dark-haired with a smart moustache, the round and amiable radical politician had been mayor of Suzanne’s nearest city since 1905. A former pupil of the École Normale Supérieure, Herriot was resolutely professional middle-class. Since graduating, he had taught and written, and felt strongly that secondary education should be democratised, a view which found a sympathetic ally in Suzanne, who was always riled by class-based discrimination. From local politics, Herriot had progressed to hold his first ministerial role during the war, and afterwards had been elected on to the Chamber of Deputies. By the 1920s, Herriot had risen to the forefront of national politics, and in June 1924 he had become prime minister, heading the Cartel des Gauches, a coalition of radicalists and socialists. Though many considered his grasp of economics to be wanting, his eloquent speeches and rich cultural knowledge won him ardent supporters. With his intellect, honesty and attention to local amenities, he had captured the hearts of the Lyonnais people. Passionate about the arts, and cultured, Herriot’s meeting with Suzanne naturally blossomed into a close and mutually admiring friendship. ‘This great, this very great and pure artist,’ he once acclaimed her.5 Herriot was a valuable addition to Suzanne’s group of friends, and his presence at a dinner guaranteed an unforgettable evening animated with brilliant conversation. Herriot in turn adored Saint-Bernard, where he observed that the trio were really ‘in their element’.6 He became a regular guest.

  On good days, life at Saint-Bernard could be paradise. Suzanne painted, Utter strode off to hunt, while Maurice could be found painting, writing (often letters, sometimes poetry), or else contemplating the animals. And the Utters’ parties soon became legendary.

  But when the guests had left, the same old grievances remained. The grand setting abetted epic dramas. Saint-Bernard was not a place of moderation.

  In a tripartite relationship on which the financial and spiritual well-being of all parties depended, the strains triggered explosive arguments. Even Suzanne’s friends conceded that she was inclined to become wildly jealous at the slightest friendly gesture Utter made towards another female. The sound of Mme Utter screaming abuse through the corridors, the master of the house swearing back in response, to an accompaniment of breaking china and slamming doors, became a familiar feature to passers-by. Sporadically, Utter would grow so incensed that he would throw the rest of the family out, declaring that it was ‘his’ castle. Or else he stormed off, and word now had it in Montmartre and Saint-Bernard that Suzanne’s hunch was correct, that he was keeping lady friends. Then when Maurice managed to get his hands on drink, his breakouts quickly had him branded a madman among the locals. More alarmingly, he had a habit of firing shots with a small pistol wherever he saw movement in the bushes. The Utters were soon renowned for their eccentricity and feared for the threat their unruly son posed to neighbours.7

  Still, even when times were good, none of the trio could release their yearning for the capital. Paris, with its noise and life and people, ever moving, always changing – the city was in their blood.

  Paris was nightclubs like the trendy Boeuf sur le Toit, whose owner, Louis Moyses, Suzanne painted that year and where jazz now jollied the post-war spirits of poet Jean Cocteau, composer Darius Milhaud and their fellow Samedistes.8 There were inspirational exhibitions, such as the retrospective at the Galerie Barbazanges-Hodebert in 1924 of the Russian painter Marc Chagall, that conjuror of technicolour dreams, whose creative oeuvre proudly defied classification. Even the more challenging art movements at least caught the attention, like Dada, that strange group born during the war who seemed set on revolt and had all of Paris talking with their nihilistic ideas; or Surrealism, whose leader André Breton had published a manifesto in October 1924, which insisted that the world was corrupt and should be reconsidered through the lens of childhood, madness and the subconscious – all were facets of the Paris that the Unholy Trinity still loved.9

  Suzanne and Maurice were perhaps less comfortable with the changes now taking place than Utter; culture-hungry foreigners and literati, particularly Americans like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, were taking advantage of the franc’s weakness and had invaded the area around Montparnasse. Fellow American Sylvia Beach’s English-language bookshop and lending library, Shakespeare and Co., was flourishing as a result. Fashionable café society of young artists, writers and socialites posed, cocktail in hand, to revel in the glamour and luxury previously the exclusive privilege of the aristocracy and the grande bourgeoisie. Ladies sported red lipstick, ostrich feather fans and evening dresses with daringly low backs, men laughed and joked in suits cut for ease of movement. New fashions, fast-paced living, jazz and the foxtrot, that supremely social, smooth and rhythmic dance so attuned to contemporary music tastes, had established a clear divide between those who conformed and those who were ‘other’. In a city of cliques, age and introspection placed a person firmly on the margins.

  More specifically, bohemian Montmartre was no more. ‘The stranger who comes to see the place gets very often an indifferent meal for which he has to pay a ridiculous price and comes away with the wrong idea of Montmartre, confusing the Montmartre of Commerce with the Montmartre of Art,’ lamented Jean Émile-Bayard in the mid-1920s.10 ‘Flats with every modern improvement rise above studios of plaster tiles […] Crowds of visitors come in their motor-cars to see the famous “Lapin Agile”.’11 Though pockets of Montmartrois launched various schemes and societies to protect their heritage, progress was a persistent opponent. But both Suzanne and Maurice clung nostalgically to their memory of pre-war Paris. That was enough for the city to retain their loyalty. Paris always gave cause to hope.

  Of all the trio, it was Maurice who most had cause to feel trapped in the infernal paradise of Saint-Bernard. Fortunately, his photographic memory allowed him to recall, whenever he chose, any one of his favourite corners of Montmartre. He would spend hours working on a canvas in the countryside, only for the finished work to represent an emotive scene of the Butte.

  Edmond Heuzé remembered an occasion when he was painting at the foot of the Sacré-Coeur. Maurice sidled up and leant on a handrail to watch.12

  ‘Are you not doing anything?’ Heuzé enquired.

  ‘No, I would rather watch,’ came the reply.

  For two or three hours, the men remained alongside each other in silence, Heuzé painting, Maurice observing. A few days later, Heuzé called in at the Rue Cortot. There on an easel in Maurice’s bedroom was the exact scene Heuzé had been attempting to capture. It was painted entirely from memory – and it was magnificent: sensitive, true, subtle and perfectly proportioned with flawless perspective. Heuzé could see in an instant that it far surpassed his own attempt.

  For a socially awkward man, Maurice was a great letter writer, too. In December 1924, he wrote a long New Year’s greeting to the young medic, translator and art collector Robert Le Masle. With his dark brown hair, angular eyebrows and chiselled features, Suzanne’s good friend was both beautiful and erudite. A man of letters, Le Masle exchanged correspondence with Maurice Ravel and moved in the same circles as Suzanne’s former lover, Erik Satie. He had recently undergone an operation for a hernia, and Maurice felt compelled to write to offer his sympathy and understanding, and to send a gouache of the Moulin de la Galette, a vestige of when Montmartre was ‘picturesque’ and ‘interesting’, he explained.13 Then there
was Lucie Pauwels. His stepfather encouraged them to maintain good relations with buyers, and Mme Pauwels was always enthusiastic about his work. A card or note every now and then seemed a pleasant gesture to make.

  Thanks to collectors like the Pauwelses, Maurice was earning well, and it was principally on his income that the family were surviving. ‘You see that pair over there?’ he was heard to say to people, gesturing towards Suzanne and Utter. ‘I have to work all the time to support them.’14 But in many respects, the arrangement was the lesser of two evils. Handing money to Maurice was as good as placing him in a sanatorium, and thanks to Utter’s astute business sense, his stepson’s skills were receiving the recognition they deserved. Meanwhile, Suzanne acted as the perfect mediator between her lover and her son, at once empathising with Maurice’s sensitive disposition yet cognisant of the onerous demands of the profession.

  But Suzanne acting as treasurer for the family budget was far from trouble-free. Not only did she give away paintings, but it seemed anyone presenting themselves at her door with a sorry tale to tell would leave with a handout

  By 1925, the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune had cause to be concerned. Maurice Utrillo was a potential goldmine, which the gallery had no intention of passing by. But he could not be trusted with cash and his security was imperative if he were to produce the merchandise they desired. Furthermore, his mother and custodian spent recklessly, faster than he could earn. So early in the year, the gallery made a proposition which was felt to be in everyone’s interest: they would buy a house in Maurice’s name in the sparkling new Avenue Junot in order to secure his work.15