Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  12. On Limousin superstition and traditions regarding engagement, see Clancier, pp. 78–9.

  13. Suzanne Courdesses-Betout, Bessines au fil des siècles (Limoges: [n. Pub.], 1990), pp. 287–91.

  14. Clancier, pp. 53–75.

  15. Clancier, p. 33.

  16. Guilbaud-Rabiller, semaine 7.

  17. Robert, p. 185.

  18. On Limousin household size, see Robert, pp. 181–4.

  19. Clancier, p. 44.

  20. Birth, marriage and death records reveal that women tended to use their maiden name rather than that of their husband on all official documents.

  21. Courdesses-Betout, p. 258.

  22. Esther Copley, The Young Servant’s Friendly Instructor or A Summary of the Duties of Domestic Servants (London, 1827), pp. 75–82.

  23. Price, p. 169.

  24. Courdesses-Betout, p. 212.

  25. Courdesses-Betout, p. 212

  26. Clancier, p. 80. Salagnac, p. 270.

  27. Robert, p. 185. I am grateful to Père Nicolas Sabléry for making the church records accessible to me and to Mme Blanche Brisset for taking time to study them with me.

  28. On Limousin weddings, see Salagnac, pp. 271–2.

  29. On Limousin wedding rituals, see Robert, pp. 213–15.

  30. Clancier, p. 81.

  31. Courdesses-Betout, p. 281.

  32. Robert, p. 184.

  33. Anne Martin-Fugier, ‘Bourgeois Rituals’ in A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Ariès and George Duby, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA, London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. by Michelle Perrot (1990), pp. 261–337 (p. 305).

  34. Price, p. 81.

  35. On birth and superstition in the Limousin, see Clancier, pp. 76–7.

  36. Evidenced by Marie-Alix Coulaud’s birth certificate.

  37. ‘Cour d’assises de la Haute-Vienne’, Le 20 Décembre – Courrier de Limoges, 1–2 March 1857, p. 3.

  38. Salagnac, p. 253.

  39. Salagnac, p. 254.

  40. Courdesses-Betout, p. 132.

  41. Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), pp. 262–3.

  42. Courdesses-Betout, p. 132.

  43. Salagnac, p. 256.

  44. June Rose, Mistress of Montmartre: A Life of Suzanne Valadon (London: Richard Cohen Books, 1998), pp. 12–13.

  45. ‘Cour d’assises de la Haute-Vienne’, Le 20 Décembre – Courrier de Limoges, 1–2 March 1857, p. 3.

  46. The trial was reported in full in ‘Cour d’assises de la Haute-Vienne’, Le 20 Décembre – Courrier de Limoges, 1–2 March 1857, p. 3.

  47. Courdesses-Betout, p. 258.

  48. Courdesses-Betout, pp. 258–9.

  49. Courdesses-Betout, p. 259.

  50. John Storm, The Valadon Drama: The Life of Suzanne Valadon (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1959), p. 19.

  51. Courdesses-Betout, p. 258.

  52. Guilbaud-Rabiller, semaine 38.

  53. Clancier, p. 292.

  54. Courdesses-Betout, p. 259.

  55. Courdesses-Betout, p. 259.

  56. Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige, exhib. cat., (Washington DC: The Phillips Collection, 1999), p. 221.

  57. Courdesses-Betout, p. 259.

  58. Storm, p. 19.

  59. Maximilian Ilyin, Utrillo (London: A. Zwemmer; Paris: Fernand Hazan, 1953), p. 4.

  60. Courdesses-Betout, p. 259.

  61. There is no evidence in the village archives to suggest that Marie-Céline Coulaud was a relative of Léger Coulaud. Coulaud was a common surname.

  62. Robert, p. 213. Clancier, pp. 77–8.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, La Vie quotidienne en Limousin au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), p. 145.

  2. Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, La Vie quotidienne en Limousin au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), pp. 29–30.

  3. Marie Dony’s death certificate is dated 25 March 1867.

  4. Maurice Robert, La Maison, Le Village, Le Paysan en Limousin, 4th edn, 2 vols (Pageas: Société d’Ethnographie et de Sauvegarde des Patrimoines en Limousin, 2007), vol. II, p. 185.

  5. Roger Price, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (London: Hutchinson, 1987), p. 73.

  6. Suzanne Courdesses-Betout, Bessines au fil des siècles (Limoges: [n. Pub.], 1990), p. 285.

  7. On Limousin children’s games, see Clancier, pp. 94–9.

  8. Courdesses-Betout, p. 234.

  9. Courdesses-Betout, p. 234.

  10. Courdesses-Betout, p. 235.

  11. Claude Lacan, Histoire du chemin de fer en Limousin (Limoges: René Dessagne, 1984), pp. 7, 41.

  12. Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), p. 244.

  13. Lacan, p. 21.

  14. See Gillian Tindall’s excellent biography. Gillian Tindall, The Journey of Martin Nadaud: A Life and Turbulent Times (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999).

  15. Courdesses-Betout, p. 235.

  16. Courdesses-Betout, p. 260.

  17. This information was revealed in Suzanne Courdesses-Betout’s updated article ‘Le Panthéon de Bessines – les origines de Suzanne Valadon’ in Suzanne Valadon 1865–1938, exhib. cat. (Martigny: Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 1996), pp. 65–9. Bessines holds no records of this relative, but there are two records for a Marie-Anne Valadon, one indicating a year of birth of 1830, held by the Hôtel de Ville de Paris.

  18. Larousse, Grand dictionnaire du XIX siècle (Paris, 1900), p. 537. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Le Travail des femmes (Paris, 1873), p. 114.

  19. An adult’s single, third-class ticket from Limoges to Paris cost 24 francs 64 in 1870. I am indebted to the Centre d’Archives Historiques de la SNCF and to the Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Vienne for this information.

  20. I am indebted to the Centre d’Archives Historiques de la SNCF and to the Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Vienne for this information.

  21. The Grand Tour, ed. by Sheila Pickles (London Pavilion Books Limited, 1991), p. 22.

  22. Horne, p. 243.

  23. Horne, p. 111.

  24. Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris (London: Picador, 2010), pp. 387–8.

  25. On Paris in 1870, see Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), pp. 282–313.

  26. On Paris in 1870, see Horne, pp. 282–313.

  27. Edmond de Goncourt, 8 December 1870, cited in Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (1870–71) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 164.

  28. Sée, Aujourd’hui Paris, pp. 267–269, cited in Clayson, p. 86.

  29. Clayson, p. 174.

  30. Edmond de Goncourt, cited in Horne, p. 294.

  31. Clayson, p. 67.

  32. Ethnologist Maurice Robert particularly makes this observation of Limousin migrants in the 19th century. See Robert, pp. 131, 180.

  33. There exists a wealth of literature on Montmartre and its history. Particularly informative are: Adolphe Joanne, Paris Illustré, Nouveau guide de l’étranger et du parisien (Paris, 1867), pp. 289–92. June Rose, Mistress of Montmartre: A Life of Suzanne Valadon (London: Richard Cohen Books, 1998), pp. 14–30. John Storm, The Valadon Drama: The Life of Suzanne Valadon (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1959), pp. 17–40. Alan Tillier, Paris (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1999), pp. 291–7. http://www.patrimoine-histoire.fr/Patrimoine/Paris/Paris-Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre.htm [accessed 9 February 2016].

  34. Frederico Rosa, ‘Tracing the Legends of Bohemian Paris and Magical Montmartre’, The Culture Trip (25 January 2016), http://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/tracing-the-legends-of-bohemian-paris-and-magical-montmartre/ [accessed 11 February 2016]. Raymond Rudorff, The Belle Epoque; Paris in the Nineties (1) – The World of Montmartre – The Pleasure Capital http://www.iub.edu/~paris10/ParisOSS/D14Montmartre/Rudorff1Montmartre.html [accessed 12 February 2016]. Montmartre
– Paris’s Secret Vineyard http://www.cooknwithclass.com/montmartre-paris-s-secret-vineyard-_ar133.html [accessed 11 February 2016].

  35. Horne, p. 232.

  36. Ann Galbally, Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003), pp. 72–3. David Burke, Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light (Counterpoint: Berkley, CA, 2008), p. 410.

  37. Sophie Krebs, ‘Montmartre, colline inspirée?’ in Valadon Utrillo: Au tournant du siècle à Montmartre – de l’Impressionisme à l’École de Paris, exhib. cat. (Paris: Pinacothèque de Paris, 2009), pp. 37–47 (p. 38). Joanne, p. 291. ‘Montmartre Village – Place Tertre History’, travelfranceonline.com (5 June 2015) http://www.travelfranceonline.com/montmartre-village-place-tertre-history/ [accessed 12 February 2016].

  38. John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th edn (New York: Museum of Modern Art and London: Secker & Warburg, 1973), pp. 197–8.

  39. Edmond Bazire, Manet (Paris, 1884), p. 30.

  40. Rewald, p. 197.

  41. Galbally, pp. 72–5.

  42. H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 264.

  43. http://www.elysee-montmartre.com/historique [accessed 14 February 2016]

  44. Clayson, p. 331.

  45. Juliette Lamber Adam, 1–2 October 1870, cited in Clayson, p. 330.

  46. Edmond de Goncourt, 30 October 1870, cited in Clayson, p. 330.

  47. Cited in Storm, p. 31.

  48. Storm, p. 36.

  49. On Paris during the siege and the Commune, see Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), pp. 282–313.

  50. J.P.T. Bury, France 1814–1940 (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1969), pp. 133–4.

  51. Horne, pp. 301–2.

  52. Horne, p. 308. Phillip Dennis Cate, ‘L’esprit de Montmartre et l’art moderne, 1875–1910’ in L’Esprit de Montmartre et l’Art Moderne 1875–1910, exhib. cat. (Paris: Musée de Montmartre, 2014), pp. 23–40 (p. 30).

  53. Edmond de Goncourt, Paris under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. by George J. Becker (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 312.

  54. Edmond de Goncourt, Paris under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. by George J. Becker (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), pp. 311–14.

  55. Clayson, p. 174.

  56. Marie-Alix Coulaud and Georges Camille Merlet married in Paris on 1 February 1874.

  57. On gossip and rumours Madeleine inspired, see Storm, pp. 32–3.

  58. On Madeleine’s character, see Robert Beachboard, La Trinité maudite (Paris, 1952), p. 23.

  59. On Madeleine’s appearance, see Storm, p. 33

  60. Storm, p. 39. Beachboard, p. 23.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, La Vie quotidienne en Limousin au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), p. 143.

  2. M. de Maistre, cited in Mgr Dupanloup, La Femme studieuse, 7th edn (Paris, 1900), pp. 122–3.

  3. Jules and Gustave Simon, La Femme au XXe siècle (Paris, 1892), p. 67.

  4. Paul Janet, La Famille, 17th edn (Paris, 1900), pp. 203, 204, 209.

  5. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 285.

  6. Ariès, p. 358.

  7. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945: Ambition and Love (Oxford, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 344.

  8. Zeldin, p. 344.

  9. Dupanloup, p. 131.

  10. Janet, pp. 216–17.

  11. Mme Millet, Journal de l’agriculture pratique, 5 December 1859, cited in Mme Marie-Sincère Romieu, Des Paysans et de l’agriculture en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1865), p. 383.

  12. Clancier, p. 145.

  13. Clancier, p. 145.

  14. Suzanne Courdesses-Betout, Bessines au fil des siècles (Limoges: [n. Pub.], 1990), p. 215.

  15. Lynn Hunt, ‘The Unstable Boundaries of the French Revolution’ in A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Ariès and George Duby, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA, London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. by Michelle Perrot (1990), pp. 13–45 (pp. 22–23). Clancier, pp. 136–7.

  16. Maurice Robert, La Maison, Le Village, Le Paysan en Limousin, 4th edn, 2 vols (Pageas: Société d’Ethnographie et de Sauvegarde des Patrimoines en Limousin, 2007), vol. II, p. 180.

  17. Martin Nadaud, cited in Robert, p. 180.

  18. Ariès, p. 292.

  19. Ariès, p. 292. Odile Arnold, Le Corps et l’me: La Vie des religieuses au XIXe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1984), p. 178.

  20. Roger Price, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (London: Hutchinson, 1987), p. 319.

  21. Ariès, p. 293.

  22. Michelle Perrot, ‘Roles and Characters’ in A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Ariès and George Duby, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA, London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. by Michelle Perrot (1990), pp. 167–259 (p. 210).

  23. Perrot, pp. 243–4.

  24. Arnold, p. 195.

  25. Stendhal, cited in Perrot, p. 243.

  26. Arnold, p. 185.

  27. Arnold, p. 185.

  28. Arnold, p. 180.

  29. Manuel de la piété à l’usage de la jeune pensionnaire (144), 1865, p. 20. Cited in Arnold, p. 191.

  30. Arnold, pp. 190–1.

  31. Jean Chalon, Liane de Pougy: Courtisane, princesse et sainte (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), p. 25.

  32. John Storm, The Valadon Drama: The Life of Suzanne Valadon (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,1959), p. 34.

  33. Storm, p. 35.

  34. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  35. Storm, p. 35.

  36. Arnold, p. 186.

  37. Chalon, p. 23.

  38. Chalon, p. 23.

  39. Storm, p. 35.

  40. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  41. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  42. On Marie-Clémentine’s childhood antics, see Storm, pp. 34–40.

  43. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  44. On Marie-Clémentine’s first artistic attempts, see Storm, pp. 41–2.

  45. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  46. Robert Rey, Suzanne Valadon (Paris: Gallimard, 1922), pp. 4–5.

  47. Rey, p. 5.

  48. Georges Merlet first appears on electoral registers in Nantes in 1875. I am indebted to the Archives de Nantes for this information.

  49. Price, p. 158.

  50. On her jobs, see Rey, p. 5. Jeanine Warnod, Suzanne Valadon, trans. by Shirley Jennings (Naefels, Switzerland: Bonfini Press, 1981), p. 13. Storm, pp. 48–9.

  51. Storm, p. 48.

  52. On Paris in the 1880s, see Colin Jones, Cambridge Illustrated History of France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 226–31. Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), p. 331.

  53. Horne, p. 331.

  54. Joanna Richardson, La Vie Parisienne 1852–1870 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 75.

  55. Henri Dabot, Souvenirs et Impressions d’un bourgeois du Quartier Latin mai 1854 à mai 1869 (Quentin: Péronne, 1895), cited in Richardson, p. 75.

  56. Le Gaulois, 9 October 1882, p. 1.

  57. On the Cirque Fernando, see Henri Perruchot, Toulouse-Lautrec, trans. by Humphrey Hare (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1958), p. 59.

  58. Le Monde Artiste, 30 June 1877, p. 7.

  59. On Molier and his circus, see Recueil Cirque Molier 1884–1933, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Linda Simon, The Greatest Show on Earth: A History of the Circus (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2014). Google ebook.

  60. Le Gaulois, 28 March 1880, p.
2.

  61. Le Gaulois, 28 March 1880, p. 2. In the original text, the pun is ‘lapins sautés’/’lapins sauteurs’: ‘Nous connaissions les lapins sautés. M. Molier a inauguré les lapins sauteurs. C’est bien la chose la plus folle du monde.’

  62. Le Figaro, 6 May 1883, p. 2.

  63. La Justice, 21 June 1881, p. 2. Le Passant, 1 June 1882, p. 6.

  64. André Utter, MNAM.

  65. Recueil Cirque Molier 1884–1933, Bibliothèque nationale de France

  66. So Marie-Clémentine recounted to François Gauzi. See François Gauzi, My Friend Toulouse-Lautrec, trans. by Paul Dinnage (London: Neville Spearman, 1957), p. 70.

  67. Le Figaro, 22 May 1882, p. 3. Originally referring to the 18th–19th-century circus performer Anselme-Pierre Loyal, the name became a general reference term for any circus manager.

  68. Rey, p. 5.

  69. Storm, p. 51.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, La Vie quotidienne en Limousin au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), p. 143.

  2. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  3. Tamar Garb, ‘Gender and Representation’ in Francis Frascina and others, Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 219–89 (p. 285).

  4. Suzanne Valadon, ‘Suzanne Valadon ou l’absolu’, n.d., MNAM.

  5. Anne Higonnet, Berthe Morisot (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 100.

  6. Gerhard Gruitrooy, Mary Cassatt – An American Impressionist (New York: Todtri, 1996), p. 13.

  7. Cited in Higonnet, p. 19.

  8. J.K. Huysmans, cited in Judith A. Barter, ‘Childhood and Maternity’, in Judith A. Barter and others, Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), pp. 69–81 (p. 69).

  9. André Utter, MNAM.

  10. Jacques Lethève, La Vie quotidienne des artistes français au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1968), p. 80.

  11. Susan S. Waller, The Invention of the Model – Artists and Models in Paris, 1830–1870 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2006), p. 51.

  12. On the Italians, modelling and wages, see Hugues Le Roux, ‘Les Modèles’, in L’Enfer parisien (Paris, 1888), pp. 68–82.

  13. Le Roux, p. 74. Lethève, p. 79.