Renoir's Dancer Read online

  Fantastical stories and incredible legends were the Limousin countrywoman’s first resource when presented with an infant who needed pacifying. Many a child raised in Madeleine’s region could recall popular tales like that of The Snow Child, in which an old peasant couple unable to have children are elated when a little boy made of snow comes to life one Christmas night, giving them the son they always dreamed of, only to watch him melt before their eyes when their possessiveness spurs him to escape.28 But in Paris, Madeleine’s stories had no context. Maurice knew nothing of the Limousin country ways or people, still less of Bessines. And traditionally, when verbal therapies failed, peasant women resorted to a more measurable tonic.

  Alcohol was respected among countryfolk and employed as much for its restorative properties as its recreational purposes. For centuries, working peasants in the Limousin had started their day en faisant chabrol (adding red wine to a dish of part-eaten soup), usually starting with a base of bréjaude, a cabbage soup prepared with fresh bacon; it was recommended for sustenance.29 The countrywoman’s natural instinct was to give a child a few drops of liquor if they needed calming. Years later, family agreed that this was almost certainly what Madeleine did with Maurice.30

  Soon, Maria and Madeleine could enrol Maurice in the local primary school at the foot of the Sacré-Coeur; if his moods could not be tempered, at least the responsibility would for a time fall to an outside authority.31 They might just prove more successful in taming him. In the meantime, only one thing could be relied upon to console him: his mother. Maurice adored Maria and wanted nothing more than to be in her presence.

  While Maurice fought to keep his mother close, Lautrec was also struggling to catch hold of her, as only he knew how. In 1889, he completed The Hangover. The image showed Maria in profile in a working woman’s shirt, her hair held in a loose chignon. She sat alone, propped on her elbow in a near-slump over a bar table. A prominent bottle and a single glass – at once half empty and half full – signalled both the cause of her misery and the promise of its continuation. The sketchy style recreated the distorted lens of drunkenness. Meanwhile, Maria’s mournful expression as she gazed into the distance epitomised the overwhelming sense of hopelessness at the heart of the piece.

  It was Lautrec’s most unflattering portrait yet. But unbeknown to Maria and Lautrec, that humble picture was to provide their first introduction to one of the most influential figures on the 19th-century art scene: Edgar Degas.32

  Separated from Madeleine Valadon by only four years in age but a chasm in class, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas presented as the quintessential Parisian gentleman. He was ‘an exceptionally distinguished man,’ remembered artist Georges Jeanniot, ‘a man of subtlety, effortless composure, and irony. His was a most intelligent head, with a very high brow and a pleasing oval shape.’33 He had ‘a few silver threads in his beard and hair, looked hale and hearty, and was dressed neatly, but without ostentation.’34 Though himself Parisian born and bred, Degas’s father was a banker who originated from Naples, while his mother was the heiress of a well-to-do family from Louisiana.35 As a young man, Degas trained in law, but quickly resolved to make painting his profession. He studied under Louis Lamothe, a disciple of Hippolyte Flandrin, from whom he received a full academic training. Degas then travelled to Italy to perfect his artistic skills, he fought in the artillery of the National Guard in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and afterwards, journeyed to New Orleans to visit family; his worldly wisdom was substantial. But it was his skill as a figure painter and role as one of the foremost champions of Impressionism and avant-garde art that had earned him his reputation. He had been instrumental in organising all of the Impressionists’ group shows to date. By the 1880s, he was relieved to have settled back into the city he considered home, which was proving an inexhaustible supply of modern urban subjects. He painted Paris’s café-concerts, racecourses, working women and bathers, but it was his images of ballet dancers for which he had become renowned.

  However, besides his professional standing, Degas was equally famed for being blunt, opinionated and (as his vision deteriorated, to a large extent justifiably) hypochondriac.

  Life had distilled his inherent cynicism, which found a daily outlet in dry, often caustic wit. His devastating critiques seemed designed for his own amusement as much as that of his audience. ‘Now and then,’ recalled Jeanniot, ‘his usually serious eyes would look amused, especially when he came out with one of those mots of his, so carefully crafted and so highly effective, too.’36 Few things delighted him more than the establishment turning on itself. And the frequent accusations of misogyny were difficult to defend; women were both fascinating and deeply troubling to him.

  ‘I had Forain over for dinner the other day,’ Daniel Halévy, son of Degas’s friend Ludovic remembered him recounting once. ‘He came to keep me company.’37

  ‘With his wife?’ Halévy enquired.

  ‘She was “out of sorts”,’ Degas sneered.

  ‘You don’t believe it then?’

  ‘How would I know?’ the painter retorted. ‘Women invented the expression “out of sorts”. It has nothing to do with us.’

  Degas was particular to the point of compulsion. The dealer Ambroise Vollard never forgot the painter’s reply when he invited him to dinner one day.

  ‘Certainly,’ Degas agreed. ‘Only, listen carefully: will you have a special dish without butter prepared for me? No flowers on the table, and dinner must be at seven-thirty sharp. I know you won’t have your cat around, but no one will be allowed to bring a dog, will they? And if there are any women present I trust they shan’t come smelling of perfume. How awful all those odours are when there are things that smell so good, like toast! Or even the delicate aroma of s—t! Oh, yes […] And very few lights. My eyes, my poor eyes!’38

  But all these quirks merely made Degas’s good opinion all the more covetable. For an artist like Lautrec, there could be no higher accolade. For an amateur, lower-class woman artist like Maria, such a prospect was unthinkable.

  Lautrec was jubilant when, in April 1889, the Courrier Français agreed to publish a drawing of his picture of Maria.39 Rightly proud, Lautrec made a gift of the image to his old family friends, the brothers Désiré and Henri Dihau and their sister Marie.40 All three were musicians, and they happened to own an impressive collection of paintings. The Dihau home gallery included works by Degas, who was also a close family friend. In fact, in 1870, Degas had painted Désiré in his role as bassoon player in the orchestra of the Paris Opéra. However, Lautrec had never yet had the good fortune to cross paths with the great man on any of his visits to the Dihau residence.

  One day, Degas was visiting his friends when he saw Lautrec’s drawing of Maria. He stopped and began to inspect it closely. ‘To think,’ he muttered at last, ‘a young man has done this, when we have worked so hard all our lives!’41

  Lautrec was exultant when the comment was repeated back to him, and even more so when singer and piano teacher Marie managed to secure him a meeting a few days later. A compliment from Degas was nothing short of gold dust. But to Lautrec’s disappointment, he left his introduction with no subsequent meetings to report back to Maria.

  Still, by the summer of 1889, there was a new diversion to distract young thrill-seekers like Maria and Lautrec: the Exposition Universelle of 1889.

  A world fair was always cause for great excitement in the capital, but this year was symbolically important: 1889 marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. The significance was not lost on European countries still ruled by monarchies, several of whom were uneasy and reluctant to participate. But Parisians were undeterred. The grand opening was awaited with keen anticipation.

  For nearly six months, Paris became the host of a brilliant party to which the whole of Europe was invited. Fine arts and industrial exhibits were on show at the Trocadéro and the Champ de Mars, while the Esplanade des Invalides housed a colonial exhibit and several state-sponsored pavilions. The capital’s
artistic skill was paraded, its architectural prowess showcased and its scientific innovations celebrated. Paris basked in its own glory. But by far the city’s proudest exhibit was the Eiffel Tower, that awesome iron structure that Parisians had been watching creep up the skyline of the Seine’s left bank over the last few months.

  The tallest metal structure in the world at the time, at over 300m high, the tower had its critics. However, few could remain unmoved as, at the monument’s inauguration, Burgundian engineer Gustave Eiffel climbed on foot to its summit and raised an enormous Tricolore flag. Parisians and international visitors, common people and celebrities; everyone gazed up in awe as the great masterpiece of engineering glittered and twinkled with the glow of over 20,000 gaslights.

  But if a daring architectural statement stole the show, there was no place for innovative contemporary art. Participation in the fine arts section was by invitation only, and the final selection of works was made by a jury as hypercritical as that of the Salon. The colourful Javanese dancers and a homage to Manet in the retrospective exhibition went some way to appeasing older Impressionists.42 But younger contemporary painters like Lautrec, Bernard and Anquetin were furious.

  Then, artist Émile Schuffenecker discovered that Signor Volpini, who had the contract for the Café des Arts opposite the exhibition, had been let down by the Italian supplier of the mirrors intended to decorate the interior of his venue. Thinking quickly, Schuffenecker offered to mount a display of paintings by himself and his friends. Anquetin and Bernard (though not Lautrec) were among the participating artists.43 Another key exponent and one of the driving forces behind the show was the artist with whom Van Gogh (now relocated to Arles and earless) enjoyed such a fractious relationship: Paul Gauguin.

  In his early 40s and well travelled, the former seaman and stockbroker had originally taken influence from the Impressionists.44 However, his travels had consolidated his desire to create art which was liberated from the constraints inhibiting Western painting. At times, the spatial fragmentation in his work still bore the hallmarks of Degas’s influence, but his use of flat areas of colour and bold outlines marked out his difference. He longed to convey not just effects as the Impressionists had done, but the inner, spiritual quality of the exotic scenery and inhabitants he had experienced in Peru, Martinique and Brittany. For Gauguin, that meant a move away from realistic representation and a return to a more primitive painting mode. As the leader of the so-called Pont-Aven group, and with his painting silently advocating an escape from urban civilisation, Gauguin had the undivided attention of the young contemporary artists.

  In the event, the Volpini exhibition failed to impress the public or the press, and contributed negligibly to the overwhelming success of the 1889 Exposition Universelle. But that hardly mattered: it represented yet another public statement of artistic rebellion. Rejected young artists were not going to back down quietly, the show declared. From now on, artistic recognition was available to any talent willing to fight for it.

  Maria had never been short of fighting spirit. Few people knew that better than Miguel Utrillo. And it just so happened that among the sea of visitors the Exposition brought flooding into the capital was none other than the old flame of Maria’s youth.45

  Miguel had landed the opportunity of reviewing the Exposition for various Spanish newspapers, including La Vanguardia. He took lodgings with a group of fellow Spaniards, among them Rusiñol and Casas, at the very Moulin de la Galette which had formed the backdrop to so many unforgettable evenings when he was a fun-loving teen. Maria had never been difficult to find if you knew who to ask, and she and Miguel were each soon standing before an older version of their former playmate.

  In Maria’s clear blue eyes, and with those soft brown tresses falling loosely about her face, Miguel could detect a gentleness and a maturity beneath the defiant mask she presented to others.46 And Maria could hardly deny that Miguel looked more dashing than ever, sophisticated and confident.47 His self-assurance was due in no small part to the fact that, in his work as an art correspondent, Miguel seemed finally to have found his niche; indeed, he had now resolved to stay on in Paris and work as an art critic. The Spaniard was delighted to rediscover all the familiar haunts, and in no time he and Maria had fallen into their old pattern: chasing playfully through Montmartre’s twisted streets, calling in at its bars and cabarets when dusk fell, laughing, bickering, making up, then repeating the whole dizzying repertoire.

  But Miguel had been absent a long time. Maria was not about to abandon her other friends and for all their fallings-out, Lautrec was one of these. Though he had been busy preparing for the Salon des Indépendants and absorbed in the flurry of excitement generated by Montmartre’s new dance hall, Moulin Rouge, with its thighs and froth and flounce, he had not forgotten Maria’s drawings.48 He discussed her ability with Zando, and the men agreed that her work showed exceptional skill.49 Really, someone with more sway and standing should see this – someone like Degas, for example.

  But Lautrec had only met Degas recently and while Zando was better acquainted with the great man, there was always a degree of condescension in Degas’s treatment of the Venetian he called ‘the prince’. The unspoken tension in their relationship was only growing more pronounced as Zando’s style crept closer to Degas’s own under pressure to sell.50 They would do better seeking the approval of an artist who was already firmly established in his own field; a person who enjoyed both an intimate acquaintance with Degas and – even more difficult to obtain – his respect. Sculptor Paul-Albert Bartholomé matched the description perfectly.

  Like Degas, Bartholomé had studied law and fought in the Franco-Prussian war. Intending to become a painter, he had attended the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts briefly.51 It was through his involvement in Paris’s art world that he had met Degas. Degas soon became a close friend, and was a frequent visitor to Bartholomé and his wife’s home for dinner. The friends maintained a regular correspondence through letters in which Degas aired his typically wry opinions on the world and, less characteristically, shared confidences about matters personal to him. The bond had been strengthened by the one’s grief and the other’s sympathy; in 1887, Bartholomé’s wife, Prospérie de Fleury, the ethereally beautiful model of his In the Greenhouse (Mme Bartholomé) (c. 1881), had died tragically young when she was in her 30s.52 ‘Poor lady, poor man!’ Degas wrote as Prospérie’s health declined.53 ‘I shall go and see them immediately. My heart of stone breaks.’ Bartholomé’s move into sculpture and his creation of a monument to commemorate his late wife had been greatly directed by Degas’s encouragement. It would have been hard to find someone closer to the revered artist.

  Therefore, one day, Lautrec took Maria along to meet Bartholomé and he encouraged her to bring some of her drawings. Bartholomé’s reaction when he was shown her work was just as Lautrec had hoped. ‘Degas has to see this!’ he exclaimed.54

  So it was that not long after, Maria found herself standing nervously on the doorstep of Degas’s apartment in the Rue Victor-Massé, a letter of introduction written in Bartholomé’s hand clutched in her sweaty palm.55

  The door was opened by a sturdy, round-faced, middle-aged woman. Years later, Maria still remembered the beautiful, penetrating doe eyes of Degas’s housekeeper, Zoé Closier, whose robust and wholesome country physique, Maria guessed, must have turned many a male head in her youth.

  At length, Maria and her portfolio of drawings were shown through to meet the man himself. Outwardly smart and polite, Degas was always deeply suspicious of ‘undiscovered talent’, never more so than when the ‘talent’ claimed to have found their voice without formal training. Slowly, carefully, he examined Maria’s pictures. He uttered not a word. His expression betrayed nothing. Eventually, his attention shifted from the documents in his hands to the young woman in front of him.

  ‘You are one of us,’ he murmured.56

  The remainder of the meeting passed in a blur. There was praise beyond Maria’s wildest dre
ams, and most of all, questions: had she really no training? Where did she find the courage to dedicate herself so fully to this work? And the money for materials? Might he purchase a drawing? That one, for example, the red chalk study of a girl getting out of a bath?

  In moments, Maria’s life was transformed. Suddenly, her greatest dream became credible.

  ‘That day, I had wings,’ she recalled.57

  Henceforward, she was welcomed at the Rue Victor-Massé as one of the household and she called in every afternoon to discuss art in general and her art in particular.58 From now on, her work was informally overseen by the paternal figure she had never had.

  Not even Lautrec could have foreseen it.

  It was Maria’s recurrent pattern of associations with older men that led Lautrec, people said, to quip darkly one day that she should go by the name of Suzanne. The name implied a reference to the tale of Susanna and the Elders (Suzanne et les vieillards in French) from the book of Daniel. In the story, the Hebrew wife of a noted member of the community rejects the advances of two lecherous older men, only to have them publicly accuse her of adultery. She is consequently threatened with death and saved only by Daniel’s intervention.59

  Maria abhorred predictability. Rather than angrily dismiss the potentially offensive comment, she embraced the suggestion; why not? She would do just that. Her confidence was building. From then on, Maria signed all her artwork Suzanne Valadon, even going so far as to return to old work and sign it with her new name. New contacts would know her only as Suzanne.

  But if her artwork was taking flight, the outline of a career starting to take shape, her personal life was as chaotic as ever. For all her liaisons, there was still no secure male presence to underpin the daily routine; no stability – for either herself or Maurice. At a time when women were financially and socially subordinate to men, it made life deeply precarious, even for a spirit as free as Maria’s.