In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art

by Sue Roe

  When her friends saw the painting they were horrified, as was Leo. Gertrude herself came to recognize in it the principles of abstraction and reduction to essentials she had herself been seeking to express in her work. She also appreciated the sense in which, in its monolithic simplicity, it did succeed as a likeness. ‘I was and I still am satisfied with my portrait,’ she later inimitably wrote. ‘For me it is I, and it is the only reproduction of me which is always I, for me.’ When Picasso showed her the work he had done in Gosol, she noticed immediately the change in his palette: ‘still a little rose but mostly an earth colour’. She recognized the influences, not only of the African carvings which by now were beginning to fascinate everyone, but also of Cézanne and Gauguin. Yet she saw, too, that Picasso’s work was unique. As she put it, ‘Picasso was the only one in painting who saw the twentieth century with his eyes and saw its reality and consequently his struggle was terrifying, terrifying for himself and for others, because he had nothing to help him, the past did not help him, nor the present, he had to do it all alone.’

  That autumn, Picasso began to work alone in his studio, uninterrupted for many hours at a time. The business of socializing, even at the Steins’, had begun to distract and irritate him. He had a new idea, which he wanted to develop in solitude. As Gertrude Stein later noted, ‘The rose period ended with my portrait, the quality of drawing had changed and his pictures had already commenced to be less light, less joyous.’ She qualified this; the subjects of the Rose Period had of course not all been joyful; in his paintings of the circus performers, he had incorporated a note of sadness and acknowledged the hardship and wretchedness of their lives. But his Rose Period had also been a time of light-heartedness, when ‘he contented himself with seeing things as everybody did. And then in 1906 this period was over.’

  The year 1906 had marked a period of considerable turbulence and change throughout France. There were over 1,300 strikes, most notably on 1 May, when the workers went out to demand an eight-hour working day. Confrontations between strikers and government were ubiquitously covered by the French press, which was then in its heyday. In all the major cities, there were up to a dozen newspapers and every city had at least four or five, all competing for circulation with the increasing numbers of gimmick papers, comic strips and supplements of photo engravings. Le Matin ran a daily column of domestic news by Félix Fénéon, a brilliant, somewhat shady figure who, though he kept a low profile, was known as a literary and art critic. He founded several magazines and edited several more, including La Revue blanche. A thin, dessicated-looking man with a sharply hooked nose, he was part anarchist, part aesthete. He had more or less discovered Paul Seurat, founded literary journals, worked for thirteen years as a clerk in the War Office, supported strikers and had allegedly thrown a bomb into the Café Terminus which caused a blast in which poet Laurent Tailhade lost an eye. After working for La Revue blanche until it folded in 1903, he had been a journalist for Le Figaro until early in 1906, when he joined the staff of Le Matin, where, after a few months, he was assigned the faits-divers column on page three, which he kept until November. In his daily column, he managed, partly through sheer brevity, to ginger the domestic events of the day with a mildly satirical edge. His stories, which he called ‘novels in three lines’, reflected with great economy the tenor of French life in 1906, revealing the growing importance and menace of the automobile; the medieval conditions that still prevailed in rural areas; the inefficiency of firearms; the arrogance of the military; the unchangingly brutal state of factory labour; and the continuing rumbling threat of anarchist violence. Life in the middle of the Third Republic was tumultuous, with the prospect of German invasion again on the horizon and the previous year’s separation of Church and State still a contentious issue, since it had reduced the power and income of the Church as well as its monopoly over primary education. Taken together, practically any random selection of Fénéon’s stories conveys the flavour of daily domestic life that year.

  There were reports of abject poverty, gunpowder plots and of the 300-year-old cannon which, ‘while thundering for the Republic’, exploded in Chatou. No one was hurt. There were stories of women killing newborns and of children smothered when their parents could not afford to feed them. Cab drivers were demanding excessive tips, resulting in ‘27 violations’. The corpse of a man named Dorlay, aged about sixty, hung from a tree in Arcueil with a sign reading, ‘Too old to work’. The court at Nancy jailed a parish priest for insulting a tax collector. Swindlers coloured the new maroon ten-centime stamps and sold them as rareties to unsuspecting punters. People died drawing water, trampled by their own cows or run over by their own hay carts. Prostitutes were slaughtered on the pavement; a poacher from Ivry, shopped to the police by a pedlar, stuck a file in the pedlar’s back. On separate occasions 2,700 feet of telephone cable were stolen in Gargan, 4,500 between Épinay and Argenteuil, another seven miles’ worth between Paris and Arpajan; and it was still going on. A travelling freak show, with its ‘horrible monsters and efflorescent skin diseases’ had been burned down in the park at Saint-Cloud. Forty gypsies, with their camels and bears, were forced by police to leave Fontenay-aux-Roses, and, for that matter, the entire region of the Seine. In Montmartre, still clearly the enclave of the poor, a Monsieur Fraire (a labourer known as Cruddy) was informed by a lawyer of his inheritance, whereupon he died of shock.

  The most significant social changes regarded labour laws and education. On 1 May, schooling for girls was made legal; on 13 July, following a wave of strikes, a bill was passed granting a compulsory day of rest, Monday. In the Moulin de la Galette, Monday became ‘cheveux’ day, with dress codes so relaxed that dancers were permitted to dance hatless. Proceedings in the dance hall became less formal that day and things sometimes became rowdier than usual on the workers’ new day off. As for Fénéon, he was multi-talented: he could spot not only a good story but also a good painting. Bernheim-Jeune now brought him into their employ, to introduce promising young artists into their stable. For, as the twentieth century unfolded, as Gertrude Stein later observed, ‘More and more the struggle to express it intensified.’

  13.

  New Expectations

  The 1906 Salon d’Automne was formally opened at the Grand Palais by the President of France, Fallières, himself. It included Diaghilev’s exhibition of the largest collection of Russian art Paris had ever seen – some four thousand works representing the art of historical and contemporary Russia. For the previous two years, Diaghilev’s pursuit of modern French art had been temporarily stalled by events. By 1904, the year he published Matisse’s work in what was to be the final issue of Mir Iskusstva, life in St Petersburg had already become precarious. In artistic circles, there was growing disillusionment with the imperial regime and, in February 1904, Russia had become embroiled in a disastrous war with Japan. Realizing that life in Russia was about to change irrevocably, Diaghilev had turned his attention to the artists of his own country. He had been working tirelessly to mount an exhibition of ‘Artistic and Historical Portraits’, making long journeys across vast areas of the country, visiting over a hundred disintegrating country estates. ‘From rooms where the plaster was falling from the ceiling, from attics and old closets where the paintings hung loose in their frames, and from cellars where the damp had mildewed the canvas’, he had uncovered thousands of portraits by Russia’s forgotten masters, selecting paintings for his exhibition from a great cargo of artistic treasures.

  By New Year 1905, there was tragedy in St Petersburg, with shooting in the streets, and many dead and wounded. In the evenings, the city was plunged into darkness. People stayed in their homes, not daring to venture out, amidst rumours that the railways would be stopped from running and water supplies cut off as the city witnessed the beginning of the civil unrest many would later see as the start of the revolution of 1917. In February, Diaghilev went ahead with his exhibition, held at the Tauride Palace in St Petersburg. At a gala banquet to celebrate the openi
ng, he gave a speech he wrote himself under the title ‘The Hour of Reckoning’. As he journeyed ‘the length and breadth of infinite Russia’, he told his audience, he had been overwhelmed by the feeling that the portraits he was recovering, though as indisputably precious as the grand country estates that still housed them, already seemed consigned to the past. Change was afoot, the modern era already in a state of advance. ‘The end was here in front of me.’ The derelict, boarded-up family estates had struck him as ‘palaces frightening in their dead grandeur, weirdly inhabited by dear, mediocre people no longer able to bear the weight of past splendours. It wasn’t just men and women ending their lives here, but a whole way of life. And that was when I became quite sure that we are living in a terrifying era of upheaval; we must give up our lives for the resurgence of a new culture … I raise my glass,’ he concluded, ‘to the ruined walls of those beautiful palaces, and in equal measure to the commandments of the new aesthetic.’

  His words were prophetic. On 17 October 1905, the Duma was created, establishing a radical new form of government. Though it included an amnesty for strikers (many of whom were artists), throughout 1905 and 1906, the political situation remained tense and dangerous, and this had a direct impact on the arts. Because Russia’s cultural institutions, theatres, concert halls and galleries were run by the State, artists of all persuasions were vulnerable, even those with established reputations. Dissenting artists risked imprisonment, or worse. The destruction of large numbers of works of art resulted in the defection of many young artists, some of whom took refuge in Paris.

  By May 1906, Diaghilev himself was in the French capital, with one of his friends from his student days, Alexandre Benois, a painter, theatrical designer and one of the illustrators for Mir Iskusstva. There, they met officials from the Russian embassy, French intellectuals and influential individuals, including Robert de Montesquiou and the Countess de Greffuhle (a prominent socialite and one of Paul Poiret’s most influential clients). Léon Benedict, a curator at the Musée du Luxembourg, put them in touch with the organizers of the Salon d’Automne, who by now included Derain as well as Matisse. Diaghilev successfully worked his charm on the director, Monsieur Jourdain. He now began outlining his plans for a spectacular show of Russian art there, to include a simulated conservatory, latticed and heavy with foliage, to show the sculptures; and a substantial collection of Russian icons, which he already envisaged displayed against a backdrop of sumptuous silk drapery. The exhibition would include the work not only of illustrious Russian painters and sculptors but also that of Russia’s youngest contemporary artists.

  In the world of rigid, legally imposed class distinctions that characterized imperial Russia, Diaghilev had always moved in elevated, cultured circles. His father and stepmother were both talented musicians (his mother died shortly after his birth), and Diaghilev had studied first (for six years) at the University of St Petersburg as a reluctant law student, then at the Conservatory of Music, under Rimsky-Korsakov. He met Benois at university in 1890; his other close friend was painter and illustrator Léon Bakst, a talented colourist and original set designer who had studied in Paris and who had also worked with Diaghilev on the production of Mir Iskusstva. Through the auspices of one of his friends, Prince Volonsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres, Diaghilev had entered the official world of the arts. The prince had invited him to edit the Imperial Theatre Yearbook for the year 1899/1900, a project which had also given his illustrators Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst their first breaks. However, it was not until he founded Mir Iskusstva and began to gather around him a group of artists who, like him, admired the work of Aubrey Beardsley and the Decadents (the ‘modern’ artists who had first inspired Picasso) that he felt he had truly begun to learn about art. Through their links with Prince Volonsky, Diaghilev and Benois had also succeeded in staging one of the first experimental ballets, Sylvia, a dance piece liberated (even before Isadora Duncan’s debut in Moscow later that year) from the restrictions of classical dance. Rows over the management of that production had resulted in Diaghilev’s dismissal, setting a precedent for the pattern of the next few years, during which he would be continually in and out of favour with the Russian imperial authorities as he searched for a way of making his mark on the development of modern art.

  Now, at the Salon d’Automne, in twelve rooms of the Grand Palais (four of them vast) he was showing 750 Russian works of all periods, from medieval icons onwards, including the work of Mikhail Vrubel, whose flamboyant, vividly coloured, sensual paintings had strongly influenced the developing style of Léon Bakst. The Russian collection was shown as a separate exhibition (with concerts of Russian music to entertain viewers in the evenings) and went unmentioned in the catalogue, but it was open to all visitors to the salon free of charge. The Russian exhibition was a huge draw, and Paris in the final months of 1906 saw ‘an invasion of Petersburgers’.

  What of the Parisian viewers? Did either Matisse or Picasso see the work of the Russian artists, the display of icons? Could they possibly have missed – or dismissed – it? Particularly given his relationship with Shchukin and his connection with Mir Iskusstva, Matisse, if not Picasso, might feasibly have been interested in the Russian works … Nevertheless, for the French artists the major sensation of the 1906 Salon d’Automne was not the Russian art but the retrospective exhibition of the works of Paul Gauguin, in which, together with drawings, ceramics and 227 paintings, his large, totemic wood carvings were shown for the first time.

  Whether or not its viewers included the artists of Montmartre, the Russian exhibition was a public success, favourably reviewed in Le Figaro. Diaghilev, Benois and Bakst were made honorary members of the salon. The art of Russia had made its mark on Paris. Nonetheless, Diaghilev still had work to do, since an honourable reception did not amount to an artistic sensation. Compared, for example, with the impact of the Fauves in 1905, the Russians had a long way to go before being hailed as in any sense path-breaking. After the salon closed, the Russian exhibition travelled on to Berlin, and a selection of works was then shown at the Venice Biennale. Then Diaghilev returned to St Petersburg until the end of the year, where he immediately began to work on his next idea, staging a series of Russian musical concerts at Paris’s Grand Opéra. In the meantime, he had made his first impression, albeit indirectly, on the world of French contemporary art, at the same time taking the opportunity to bring himself up to date with all the latest developments.

  Matisse was briefly in Paris for the Salon d’Automne, before returning to Collioure for the winter. Before he left, he showed Sarah and Michael Stein the three portraits of sailors he had painted there that summer – the Self-Portrait (in striped mariner’s jersey) and the two portraits of a young sailor, which he initially pretended he had acquired from the postman in Collioure, before admitting he had painted them himself. Michael and Sarah purchased the new self-portrait and the first version of Young Sailor, which they considered more vibrant and less stylized than the second. They hung Young Sailor, I at the centre of the wall covered with pictures by the dining-room table in the rue Madame, beneath Matisse’s new self-portrait. When she saw it, Gertrude brought out her small, intimate self-portrait by Picasso and displayed it on her own wall.

  Before Matisse left for Collioure, he and Picasso met for the second time, on this occasion at the rue de Fleurus, as dinner guests of Leo and Gertrude Stein. On his way there, Matisse passed a shop in the rue de Rennes, where he happened to notice a little Congolese vili figure. He bought it, and took it with him to the Steins’. The story of Picasso’s response to it is bizarre; by all accounts, he refused to be parted from the statue. According to Max Jacob, he stayed up all that night and was found (by Jacob) the next morning ‘surrounded by drawings of a one-eyed, four-eared, square-mouthed monster which he claimed was the image of his mistress’. Whether or not the mistress was Fernande, why Matisse agreed to part with the statue and whether indeed the story was apocryphal must remain mysteries. What was becoming clear, espec
ially since the recent exhibition of Gauguin’s towering, totemic wooden figures, was the extent of everyone’s growing fascination with such works.

  Picasso could not now help but perceive Matisse as a potential rival. Ten years older than Picasso, the French painter already had the backing and continued interest of a growing number of purchasers, including Shchukin, Druet and the Steins. Sarah Stein was rapidly collecting his work, and introducing it to America. Matisse was well-dressed, articulate and already well known – by now – throughout Paris; he had also produced three children. To Picasso, he was a disconcerting presence from every point of view. In his work of the Blue and Rose periods, Picasso had continually taken as his subjects mothers, children and family groups. The children of the acrobats and circus performers had impressed him quite as deeply as had the adults. For several months, van Dongen, Guus and Dolly had brought the Bateau-Lavoir to life, but in December 1905 they had moved to a bigger apartment at the foot of the Butte, in one of the streets behind the Moulin Rouge. For van Dongen, at least, substantial success had followed from the 1905 Salon d’Automne, which had brought his Fauvist paintings of figures to the attention of a newly appreciative public – in commercial terms, it was his kind of ‘wildness’, not that of Derain or Vlaminck, that appealed to the sort of purchaser keen to own a painting of a woman in her undergarments which was also a work of art. Life in the Bateau-Lavoir was quiet without the van Dongens, and Picasso missed Dolly. Fernande’s memoirs reveal that she and Picasso had hoped for a child of their own, but the long-term effects of her miscarriage six years ago meant she was destined to be disappointed – though Picasso may not yet have known that.