The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Not for a moment would I betray the standards inculcated in me by my mother (never mind the loose behavior of our husbands), but I am free to feel what I feel. I am free to enjoy and, with sympathetic vibration, to validate the joy of congeniality.

  Yes, I am forever yoked to my husband, but this is the art of living: to feel what I feel; to be in no way repressed, mentally or emotionally; and to find the means both artistically and personally to let out the light that is within me.

  How glad I am, at last, to travel with my husband, and to see the world beyond the borders of my country. To have painted Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.

  WHEN I SHOW THIS PORTRAIT of 1783 to Joseph Vernet, the mentor of my maiden days and now my friend, he wishes, on the strength of it and others, to nominate me as a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture.

  A M. Pierre opposes my admission because he does not believe in including women. It is pointed out to him that Mme Vallayer-Coster, a flower painter of genuine talent, has been made a member. Genuine lovers of art created a petition in my favor, and they circulated a verse: “To rob you of your honor / One must have a heart / Of stone, of stone, of stone”; the verse puns on the name Pierre, meaning stone.

  As my entry, I submit Peace Bringing Back Abundance, which as an allegorical painting ranks higher in the categories of the Académie than does portraiture. And I am admitted.

  I like so much my self-portrait in a straw hat that I also paint one of the queen in a straw hat and wearing a simple muslin dress. It is such a simple dress that some viewers are indignant and claim that I have painted her disrespectfully in her nightgown. That I should show disrespect for the queen is absurd. Muslin is her own favorite garb, which she always wears at the Petit Trianon where she is most at ease with her friends, away from the atmosphere of the court at the Château de Versailles. She also wears muslin (as I do) to save money. A court dress requires thirty-six yards of silk. But the silk merchants have risen up in arms, saying that the queen is ruining their business, by her example. The queen meant only to do good for the country by guarding its treasury.

  Using the same three-quarter-length pose, I paint her again (much more formally) in blue silk trimmed with white lace; in both portraits she is holding a pink rose, the emblem of beauty, but to me she is far more beautiful in the simple white frock. I also paint her closest friend, the Duchesse de Polignac, the lover of the Comte de Vaudreuil, in muslin with a simple pink sash at her waist. She is, indeed, very pretty.

  YES, THERE BEGINS TO BE some repetition in my works, some might say, but if one were to listen more closely, one would actually hear a conversation among them. One painting comments on and often extends the ideas of another.

  But to try something entirely new, I decide to paint two ambassadors from India, whom I glimpse at the opera. I love to paint flesh, and theirs offers complexity in a new key. I remember my talented student, Mlle Émilie Roux de la Ville, and wish she too could see and paint the coppery flesh of the father and son from India. I send them a note of request, but they reply that only by direction from His Majesty will they consent to pose for me, for they have been sent to Paris by their emperor, Tippoo Saib.

  However, with the help of His Majesty and by agreeing to come to their house, I do gain access, painting first one and then the other, while the paint is drying, back and forth. I am in a kind of paradise of exoticism, and I feel that they bring the sun and earth of their country with them. I enjoy their drapery, of course—they are dressed in white muslin gowns, embroidered with flowers worked in gold thread, and wear tunics with loose sleeves folded back and elaborately decorated belts and hems—but it is my greatest pleasure to paint their faces and necks and hands.

  While the son assumes a standing pose for his portrait, with his hand on his dagger, I paint the father, who has a splendid head, seated. Of course their flesh, bones, and expressions vary, just as ours do. They are a study, though in separate frames, of comparison and contrast, and I feast on them and learn with voracious appetite.

  My friend Mme de Bonneuil is curious about meeting these ambassadors, and I am able to arrange through the interpreter that she and I be invited to dine with them. To our amazement, we eat on the floor, lying down beside the table. They serve us with their own bronze hands, lifting the food from the dishes with bare fingers and using their palms as cups. The feast includes a dish of sheep’s feet with a highly spiced white sauce. Eating the food that is a delicacy to them is very difficult for us, but we make merry nonetheless, and we teach them to sing a popular French song.

  Unfortunately, at our last meeting, another difficulty develops. One of my two subjects, Davich Khan, the son, refuses to let me have his portrait after it has dried. He believes it is hidden under his bed, and he says such concealment is necessary because the image lacks a soul. A valet tells Davich Khan through an interpreter that His Majesty wished to have the portrait, and he has delivered it to him. Davich carefully and deliberately picks up his dagger to kill the valet, but the interpreter is able to explain that in Paris one may not kill his valet.

  It concerns me that he felt his image lacked a soul, but perhaps something is askew in the translation. Perhaps in his country, a soul is imparted to an image by the two staying in the same room together for a certain period of time. Or perhaps some ceremony is performed, or permission granted from the sovereign or even a deity. In any case, I am very glad to have the portraits, one of which I give to His Majesty and one of which I keep for myself. I keep the father, for I have less upsetting associations with him than with the son and his dagger.

  LEAVING MY OWN BRUSHES to languish while I teach is a great strain, and in a cheerful way I point out the hardship to my husband. It is more profitable, I remind him, to make trips to the homes of aristocrats and ambassadors. Eventually M. Le Brun sees the simple truth of my statements, and since commissions are ever pouring in, he agrees with me that I no longer need to waste my time trying to be what I am not. With all my heart I embrace my roles both as painter and mother, equally, but I am not a painting teacher for those who lack commitment or passion or both.

  Because my paintings are hung in the annual salon (since I am now a member of the Académie) next to the work of M. de Ménageot, the ignorant associate me with him and assert he is the true author of my work. Anyone should be able to see that, while I respect his style of paintings, it is not at all like my own. His are composed in a classic historical style, with an emphasis on drapery.

  My work becomes so much in demand that I schedule three sittings a day, although by evening I am really too fatigued to continue to paint. I develop a stomach disorder, and I become very thin. My friends suggest to the doctor that I be required to rest after lunch. To retire to my bedroom, draw the curtains against the light, and lie on my bed, waiting patiently for a nap, does indeed help me to sustain my strength.

  Only in the case of painting a self-portrait does one learn the fine points of truly capturing the inner life, but sometimes there is also a social or political motive in portraiture. Because as a woman painter who paints as well as a man, I continue to be a puzzle or a threat to many, I decide on a self-portrait that displays evidence of maternity. In my next self-portrait, I include my little daughter, for is she not proof that I am a mother and that I pose no threat to anyone?

  I CALL THE PAINTING MATERNAL TENDERNESS in opposition to those slanderers claiming I paint so masterfully that surely my paintbrush is a penis! No, I am a mother, this painting says. My head is tilted awkwardly to one side, the better to nuzzle up to Julie. My expression is simpering and stupid. With both arms and both hands I am holding my little girl tightly to my bosom, too tightly. The most truthful thing in this painting is Julie’s expression. Her eyes ask, “Why is my maman clutching me so tightly when usually I am free?” The turban around my head looks something like a floppy halo, as though I were the Holy Mother clasping her babe.

  I LIKE MUCH BETTER the portrait I paint in 1784 of the Comte de Vaudreuil. Sometime
s thinking of the Prince de Ligne, who was so kind to M. Le Brun and me in Brussels by sharing his great collection of Rubens and Van Dyke, I paint the Comte without restraint, rendering his countenance just as sensitive and handsome as he really is. I owe him a great deal for recommending me to the queen, and I am determined to represent him more appealingly than ever before. The queen grows ever more friendly with the Comte de Vaudreuil and the Duchesse de Polignac.

  I have also met now the Swedish nobleman Axel von Fersen, whom the queen adores. He is known as the most handsome man in Europe, and I am glad I am not asked to paint him, though I like him very much. The English call the Swedish nobleman “The Picture” because he is considered the almost-too-good-to-be-true image of masculine perfection. But it is the wit and social liveliness of the Comte de Vaudreuil that have captured my heart.

  If one has self-confidence, then either the repression of a tender feeling or its expression through observing all proprieties can make the moments at a supper or a salon sizzle with life. The mind is like an acrobat.

  As an act of self-indulgence, I engage a model to pose at my studio as a bacchante. She is entirely nude, except for the skin of a leopard draped across her thighs. And so I paint two “skins,” one of a wild animal and one of a very desirable woman. One of her elbows rests on the round arm of a civilized sofa. The other arm is lifted over and across her head, exposing that entire side of her body and her breast to the brightest light. The breast is treated as one sometimes treats a face (as I treated my own face in the girlish and modest self-portrait after the birth of my daughter); that is, with a sharp contrast between light and dark. In a face, the nose divides the two realms. Here they are divided by the nipple.

  The face of the bacchante would be in light, except the shadow of the raised arm falls across it in the most interesting and unexpected way. Her face is made interesting with shadows thrown not by a hat brim but by her own naked arm. The dynamic of the painting is contained between the bent elbow of her raised right arm and the nude bent left knee; that dynamic from high to low is crossed by an opposing dynamic arising from the lower right corner, the skin of the leopard crossing the thigh and on up. Her smooth white body is crossed by the spotted skin.

  What a vulnerable place that is beneath the raised arm that reveals and raises the breast.

  THE PORTRAIT I PAINT of the queen for the coming salon, in 1787, like Maternal Tenderness, depicts her with her children. She is dressed in red velvet, seated, with her firstborn daughter, Marie-Therese, leaning lovingly against her shoulder; the dauphin stands close by, and her second son is in her lap. I had also included the infant Sofie in her crib, but when she died I was asked to paint over her, leaving only an empty crib, which the dauphin points to in a heartrending way. I have saved the pastel sketch of the bundled infant. I consider offering it to the queen, but I think it would wring her heart to look at the image of her daughter whom she has lost.

  No mother has loved her children more than the queen; she has spent as much time with them as possible, and for this she is criticized by the court, as she prefers the company of her children to cards and gambling. The court considers such time to be squandered and refers to those tender moments as the queen’s “dissipations.” At this time, the hearts of the populace are hardening against the queen, so much so that I begin to fear again the prophetic words of my father, coming home late from New Year’s conversation with the philosophes, when he told my mother that our world should soon be turned upside down. I feel a nervousness beginning in myself, not just my stomach, but my whole being. I find, during this period, that I am more consoled by dinner parties, by opera, and by theater than I am by nature.

  Merely the frame for the painting of the queen and her children is ridiculed for its extravagance by the hostile crowd when it is carried, empty, into the salon. They are the same mob, I daresay, who had protested the queen’s portrait when she wore inexpensive muslin and a straw hat. I am afraid to be present when the frame and the canvas are united and displayed to the public, but my dear brother, Étienne, rushes to let me know that the painting of the queen in red velvet with her children is much admired.

  Nonetheless, in a few days, hostility has mounted and the portrait is removed. In its place appears a crude sign which reads “Madame Déficite.”

  Perhaps it is because our own times have become frighteningly unruly, with passions unleashed, that we begin to turn back to the classical periods of Greece and Rome, when beauty and truth counted for more. And yet I have always been greatly influenced by Rousseau, who puts much emphasis on feeling and the inner life; I regret some segments of society have adopted him for their own use to justify behavior that is not only unruly but vicious.

  WHILE I AM RESTING one afternoon after lunch, my beloved brother comes to my apartment to read to me some excerpts from the Voyages du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, for Le Brun-Pindare (not related to my family) is coming to my supper party and is scheduled to read verses to us from his own translation from the Greek of Anacreon. This evening we will be treated to language depicting what life was like in ancient Greece. As soon as Étienne finishes reading a description of a Greek dinner, recipes, and sauces, with his inimitable enthusiasm he suggests that we try some of the recipes this evening for our party. We shall taste Greece! Étienne is irresistible in his zest for life, and I send for my cook.

  Together we settle on one sauce for the fowl and another for eels, Greek sauces, one of which features pork fat, salt, and vinegar. As we talk I receive a note that the Comte de Vaudreuil and his friend M. Boutin will be late in attending this evening. I am sure a shadow passes over my face at this information, for my observant brother asks me if I have received bad news. His gaze is rather too penetrating.

  “Not bad news,” I reply, “but an opportunity. We will be eating Greek food, we will hear poetry in the Greek manner, and it occurs to me to dress some of our pretty ladies, who will arrive first, in Greek costumes. We will become a living painting, and those who come late—they do not arrive till ten—M. Vaudreuil and M. Boutin—will receive the surprise of their lives. They will believe themselves literally transported to another time and place, one that we would all like very much to inhabit!”

  “Explain in more detail,” Étienne urges, and he looks at me as he did when we were children and I was the big sister, almost magical in her ability to conjure up new and exciting activities and adventures. “Are you not, dearest and only sister, trespassing on the territory of literature? Is it not the power of drama, even of the novel, to transport one to another time and place?” He himself writes plays.

  “All the senses shall have their role in the miracle,” I reply. “The food will smell and taste divine. We shall have music à la grecque for the ear, our costumes for the eye, poetry for the mind. The reading of poetry will transport us yet again. It will be like having a painting represented in a painting. One enters one frame of reference only to enter another. It will be delightfully confusing, such that the latecomers will be forever in our debt for having created such a surprising spectacle. I do not think reality will ever seem stable to them again!” Of course I am exaggerating, but only a bit. I do almost believe that I am a conjuror of sorts.

  At that moment, as though to confirm my occult powers, who should step into the immediate vignette but one of my neighbors from within the mansion, the Comte de Parois. And he is the possessor of a fine collection of authentic Etruscan vases. In a wink, he enters the enthusiasm of the moment, and his servants, like a troupe of genies, transport his treasures, quite a number of bowls and vases, from his apartment to mine.

  From this array, I choose a selection, notable for its delightful variety, and then assemble them into a new vignette of an interesting and harmonious nature. I clean and wash the vases myself, very carefully, and then arrange them again on a bare mahogany table. What an earthy but noble display of textures, of wood and ancient clay.

  To bring the whole picture together, I have a large screen placed b
ehind the chairs, and I drape the screen, securing it here and there so that the background is uniform and pleasing. Of course, I have a large supply of all sorts of drapery in my studio. Next I have a large lamp suspended from the ceiling above the table so that the entire tableau will be appropriately lit.

  How delightful to construct life! Yes, the theater has the illusion of such, but here my medium is reality: it will include us as ourselves, doubled by our roles. One will doubt the focus of his eyes, and ask himself does he see his friends or ancient Greeks?

  Charming Mme Chalgrin, Vernet’s daughter, is the first to arrive. I take her hand and lead her laughing into my studio, for she misunderstands and thinks I am going to use the flesh of her face as a canvas and superimpose new features upon her. “Not quite,” I say merrily, “but something like. All of you compose my canvas, and with this drapery you will become almost unbelievably Greek. You know my mother has been a hairdresser, and I too shall practice that art upon your head, à la grecque.” Mme Chalgrin is amazed and a bit incredulous. But when I take her to the long mirror, after my work is finished, she gasps and reaches out to touch her image to see if it is real. Of course her fingers encounter glass, but she believes her eyes.

  Next to arrive is the great beauty Mme de Bonneuil, who accompanied me in eating sheep’s feet, along with her little daughter, who will be a companion for Julie. As was my father’s custom, I take care that my daughter has the opportunity to meet and to hear the conversation of my own friends. Mme de Bonneuil is transformed in a trice! Even more enticing as a Greek woman! And then comes my beloved and talented sister-in-law Suzanne, both singer and actress, who has the most beautiful eyes in the world. As soon as each lady arrives, I costume her and arrange her hair. Athenian ladies all, from top to toe!