Montmartre (Art History eBook)

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THE TASTE OF

Famous

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Painters

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MONTMARTRE

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Text by Pierre Courthion

64

COLOR PLATES

OLD MONTMARTRE: THE WINDMILLS, THE COUNTRY VILLAGE

m

GEORGES MICHEL - HORACE VERNET - GÉRICAULT THÉODORE ROUSSEAU - COROT BOUHOT VOLLON DAGUERRE BELLARDEL -

-

-

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUP AND THE RISE OF IMPRESSIONISM BAZILLE

-

FANTIN-LATOUR

GUILLAUMIN

-

DEGAS

MANET

-

RENOIR

-

-

-

CÉZANNE PISSARRO

VAN GOGH'S MONTMARTRE

NIGHTLIFE AND THE CIRCUS LAUTREC

SEURAT

-

THE REVUE BLANCHE PAINTERS BONNARD

VUILLARD

-

ROUND ABOUT THE PLACE RAVIGNAN AND THE LAPIN AGILE PICASSO

-

BRAQUE

-

MODIGLIANI

GRIS -

-

MARCOUSSIS

SEVERINI

THE MONTMARTRE UTRILLO KNEW

Distributed

in.

by

the

THE WORLD PUBLIS

.

2231 WEST IIOTH

CLEVELAND

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THE TASTE OF OUR TIME Collection planned

and

directed by

ALBERT SKIRA

TEXT BY

PIERRE COURTHION Translated hj Stuart Gilbert

Montmartre

^

Title page:

Camille Corot:

The Moulin de

©

la

Galette at

Montmartre

(détail),

1840.

BY ÉDITIONS d'art ALBERT SKIRA, I956. Distributed in the United States

by

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 2231 West iioth Street, Cleveland

AU

2,

Ohio

reproduction rights reserved by Syndicat de la Propriété Artistique and Association pour la Défense des Arts plastiques et graphiques (A.D.A.P.G.), Paris.

Library

of Congre ss

Cataîog

Card Number : j6-yp2i.

Famous

by Great

Places as seen

Painters

new group of volumes in "The Taste of Our Time" séries reveals how much some spots of earth, some famous cities, owe to painters who hâve loved them, and how many artists hâve discovered in a spécial harmony between skies and buildings the secret of a new light, new ways of painting. With

This

windmills and vineyards Montmartre was just a country village at the beginning of the i9th century and, though now absorbed by Paris, is still a little world apart, a favorite resort of painters, writers and musicians in quest of quiétude and "atmosphère.'* Crowned by the Sacré-Cœur, the hill-top is a place of prayer and méditation, while after dark the lower slopes glitter with the lights of Montmartre's nightlife. And many a painter of genius has evoked the richly varied aspects of the very différent worlds its

that intermingle

on

this

famous

hill.

- THEODORE ROUSSEAU - GERICAULT DAGUERRE - COROT - VOLLON - CÉZANNE

GEORGES MICHEL

BOUHOT

-

BELLARDEL - GUILLAUMIN - FANTIN-LATOUR - BA2ILLE DEGAS - MANET - RENOIR - VAN GOGH - PISSARRO TOULOUSE-LAUTREC - SEURAT - BONNARD - EVENEPOEL VUILLARD - PICASSO - MODIGLIANI - GRIS - BRAQUE SEVERINI

-

MARCOUSSIS

-

UTRILLO

-

VIVIN

Montmartre ith its pîcturesque houses

and gardens, mndmills and

cabarets^ its

happy hlend of town and country, Montmartre bas always been no less appreciated hy lovers of romantic solitude than bj addicts of its nightlife.

For

no ordinarj suburb ; though a reluctant victim of the tentacular development of Paris, Montmartre bas lost notbing of its ^^personality^'' it is

none of tbe glamour of a legendary past tbat chronique scandaleuse and martjrology.

is

a curions mixture of the

As regards the origin of the name, several théories hâve been put forward, but the obvious explanation that it is a French form of

—

mons martyrum

or '-^Mount of Martyrs^''

—

is

most probably

correct,

and it is generally thought that the name commémorâtes the martyrdom of St Denis and his deacons, Sts Rusticus and Eleutherius. According to that early historian of the Franks St Gregorj of Tours, St Denis was sent to Gaul during the reign of the Emperor De cius ( 24^-2} i), became the first bishop of Paris and '^having undergone many torments in the cause of his Redeemer rvas put to death by the sword'^ But it is also possible that the name refers to those unknown martyrs whose re mains were buried at the summit of Montmartre hill (the '-'Butté'^) ; a possibility borne out by fragments of inscriptions brought to light on fuly /;?, 1611, by workmen excavating the crypt of the so-called ^'Holy Martyrs^ Chapel,'^ adhère St Ignatius of Loyola and his six companions took vows of poverty and chastity'^. The soil of the Butte was rieh in gypsum (the famous "p laster of Paris'') and in Merovingian times there were dwellers on the hill, which

was

then surrounded by

swamps

andforests. In the early Middle

Ages a

group of Bénédictine nuns took up résidence in the church on the summit,

and

thereafter

Montmartre was administered by

the dynasty

of noble

memory survives in the name of one of its public squares. was The famous ail over France almost^ indeed^ too famous ; gifts poured in from ail parts of the countrj and in this atmosphère of abhesses whose

—

convent

luxurj the marais of the nuns deteriorated. We mil not dwell on the is reputed to hâve made in the stay that gayest of monarchs Henri

IV

Abbaye aux Dames, the big, thatch-roofed édifice at the junction of Rue du Mont-Cenis and Rue Saint-Vincent, ivhen in his opérations against Paris he made Montmartre his headquarters. But there can be no question that the abbesses treated Montmartre as their fief and, intoxicated by poncer, forgot the exigencies of their vocation. Order jvas

not restored until successive archbishops had taken vigorous action,

followed by the

efforts

of two ^ealous disciplinarians, St Francis of Sales

and St Vincent of Paul. Later, when in terms of an agreement signed at the Ahbey and in considération of an annuity of tivo hundred thousand crowns ^, Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, had been forced to accept the conditions of peace

upper convent

mth

the

imposed by Louis

Abbaye

in

a

XIV,

single

the la tter united the

community.

So much for the Butte Sacrée, the ''Sacred HilP' of long ago. Let us turn now to the other side of the picture. Before the Révolution there used to be a tavern in Rue de Clichy called

La Grande

Pinte, ivhere heartless ?nothers came to sell their

—

had 'follies^^ i.e. country in the neighborhood. The Montmartre guinguettes, so named after a certain Guinget n>ho had kept a famous tavern in the Ménilmontant district, were the scène of gay nocturnal frolics, and their signboards flaunted such alluring names as Au Veau qui tette. Au Berger galant, A la Fontaine d'Amour. During the Révolution Marat hid in the Montmartre quarries, ivhence he edited the revolutionary news-sheet L'Ami du Peuple. Under the Terror projects were made for renaming the ''Mount of Martyrs^"* but, though the first mayor of the new commune, Félix Desportes, made haste to suppress and tear down the Abbaye, the new name proposed, daughters

to

the

pleasure-houses—

^"^Mount

Marat^^

wealthy

officiais

n^ho

fat le d to gain currency.

Another

historié

association

calls

for mention hère

:

the

heroic

défense of the Clichj toll-gate in

1814 when, retreating before the Allies, Joseph Bonaparte gave four hmdred dragoons of the National Guard, commanded by Marshal Moncey^ the order to bar the way to the army of Silesia, twenty thousand strong a feat of arms immortalit^ed bj the artist Horace Vernet 3. The Russians were repulsed time and again before, finalIj, theji broke through into the market-place and overcame the

—

HORACE VERNET. DEFENSE OF PARIS AT THE CLICHY TOLL-GATE,

182O.

gallant

making a last, desperate stand beside named for the fineness of its flour) // was ten years la ter Dehraj^ ajoung man who had heen ivounded

Montmartre Fin mill

the Blute

there that

millers

(so

.

in the Battle of the Butte, set

farm

into

down

ivith

up a

dance-hall, after converting the old

a tavern, where home-made galettes (griddlecakes) washed

Montmartre

claret were served by the

former farm-girls.

This îvas not the only occasion when Montmartre made historj. It was at a banquet at delles (noiP

of

^

Rue

Le

Petit Château-Rouge in Place des Hiron-

Christiani) that the movement leading to the Révolution

48 began; and,

March

again, on

18, i8yi, the

Rue du Chevalier

Barre (then Rue des Rosiers) jpas the scène of the outbreak of the Paris Commune. Some years later, to purge Montmartre of its réputation as a place of disorderly living and a hotbed of révolution, and

de la

in

memory of Father Eudes

ivho in

i6yo, preaching on the Butte, had

bidden the French nation dedicate itself to the Sacred Heart, it was décide d to

build the great basilica,

Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur,

inaugurated on June j, i8pi, ivhich now looks proudly down on Paris

and which, mth

characteristic irrévérence, the

Montmartrois promptly

bapti:(ed '-'Notre-Dame de la Galette

Always, when we peruse

the history of

Montmartre, we fînd

mingling of faith and frivolity, of Villonesque loose living courage, combined mth

mth

this

high

a propensity for mllful eccentricity, verging on the Middle Ages. And there is

grotesque, almost in the spirit of the late

had acquired

a danger spot for the of the ipth century, when Georges Michel, Montmartre" s first landscape-artist, was painting its windmills.

no doubt that

it

the réputation of

inoffensive bourgeois at the beginning

GEORGES MICHEL. VIEW OF MONTMARTRE.

THE FIRST PICTURES OF MONTMARTRE Georges Michel, born in Paris on January 12, 1763, we hâve unworthy precursor of Jongkind and Impressionism, as is proved by his watercolor sketch View of Montmartre (Louvre)*. For his contemporaries, however, he was merely an eccentric artist who sometimes earned an honest penny by restoring pictures. When he was only fîfteen he ran away with a young laundress and had to go into hiding to escape reprisais from her outraged parents. His first child was born when he was sixteen; by the time he was twenty he had five. Ail trace of

IN

a not

II

him is lost until 1783 when he was doing his military service in Normandy; the colonel of his régiment took him under his wing, promoted him lieutenant and encouraged him to paint. While in the army he sent ail his pay to his family. He seems to hâve been away from Paris during the Révolution, perhaps in Switzerland, whence he returned a few days before the storming of the

Bastille.

One of his closest friends was a ne'er-do-well who after throwing an unfaithful mistress

painter, Bruandet,

from

a

window went

to cover in the Forest of Fontainebleau,

THEODORE ROUSSEAU. STORM EFFECT. VIEW OF MONTMARTRE.

12

his seclusion to account by making sketches of the woodlands. As for Michel, he seems to hâve mended his ways as he grew older. Michel was known as the "Ruysdael of Montmartre," though his brushstrokes were less carefully directed and more thickly charged than those of the Haarlem Master. But he, too, indulged in efïects of livid light striking through clouds, and often placed, well in the foreground, a windmill on a hillside outlined against the sky. Still Michel had little or no success. "The public did not appreciate his deep organ-notes; the textural richness and originality of his scènes of Belleville and Montmartre, that thick impasto in which we sensé his joy in modeling, were lost on his contemporaries. Equally unrecognized were the freshness and delightful ease of his crayon sketches, often imbued with

where he turned

open spaces." ^ Michel coUaborated with De Marne, a fairly successful genre painter of the time, and sometimes brushed in his landscape backgrounds. "Do as you please," he told him. "You know my views and how little a signature means to me. In fact I make a fine feeling for vast

my pictures. To my mind, a painting should speak for itself." Michel was an indefatigable hiker. Often at nightfall he was seen returning with his wife from long walks in Montmartre and the neighborhood. When she died he remarried, and it was his second wife who, after his death on June 7, 1843, ^^ ^he âge of eighty, of a paralytic stroke, told Sensier the story of his career as a painter. During his last years he was fairly prosperous and owned a house at 2, Avenue de Ségur, where he turned out a steady stream of pictures. manuscript found amongst his widow's papers tells us sometliing of his appearance and habits. He was loosely built, with an elongated torso and spindle legs had black eyes and hair, a bulbous nose and a large mouth. He always placed his

a point of never signing

A

;

13

keys under his pillow when he went to bed, worshipped the "Suprême Being" of the rationalists (though in extremis he

thought better of it and reverted to the God of his forefathers), admired Rembrandt and detested the old régime. After his death our "Michel of Montmartre" who had prided himself on never wandering far from the wings of "his" windmills was completely forgotten. Amongst those who, later, recognized his merits were two painters, Jeanron and Charles Jacque, and the critic Théophile Thoré, fîrst to publish an account of his life and work^. Sainte-Beuve speaks of "that poor devil of a French landscape-painter, who had so fine a feeling for, and love of, simple things." Théodore Rousseau to whom we are indebted for a picture, softly veined with green, of Montmartre seen from the Saint-Denis Plain (also known as Storm Ejfect) took a less favorable view of his colleague and precursor. "I enjoy his careless, hasty productions well enough, but I fear that presently we shall hâve a crowd of imitators of friend Michel, practitioners of slapdash art. It's the thin edge of the wedge." Presumably Rousseau had not seen MicheFs watercolor sketches. Alfred Sensier was better advised when he remarked that Michel's art "often rises above the earthbound and evokes to superb effect the far-flung splendor of the sky." True, Millet's biographer was often over-generous

—

—

in his appraisals;

still I

am

inclined to think that hère

a jus ter estimate of the artist Michel really was:

many

occasions, in his simple way, of the Barbizon Schook In 1820 when Géricault was Martyrs, one of his neighbors was two years, who, loyal Bonapartist

one

we hâve who on

anticipated the achievements living in the Chaussée des

Horace Vernet,

his elder

by

that he was, did not fail to

paint a Défense of Paris ^ celebrating the heroic exploit described in an earlier page. None of those who saw Géricault riding

by 14

in the early 'twenties, "his paintbox

hooked

to the

pommel

THÉODORE GÉRICAULT. THE PLASTER

We

KILN,

1

822-1 824.

from Clément, Géricault's biographer, that one day when the was taking a walk in Montmartre in the company of his inséparable companion, the painter Dedreux-Dorcy, he suddenly stopped to gaze at the old farm in which the kiln was located, "enveloped in a grey cloud of dust under a lowering sky, with some horses eating their humble pittance in the foreground. He was struck by the melancholy of the scène, a hasty sketch of which he made then and there. On returning to his studio he painted this admirable little picture" now in the Louvre, a work which foreshadowed what was later to bc called Realism. learn

artist

15

of his saddle," can hâve thought that the athletic young artist was so near his end. One day when he had gone with his friend Dedreux-Dorcy to Clignancourt, to visit a factory producing artificial jewels in which he was interested, his horse fell at the toll-gate in the Chaussée des Martyrs. He was severely injured and after being confined to his bed for many months he died on '^

January 25, 1824. ETIENNE BOUHOT. ST PETER's CHURCH, MONTMARTRE, CA. 1825.

16

In the heyday of Romanticism Montmartre provided artists with many motifs exactly to their taste: a ruined convent, windmills, springs and streams, a typical "folly" in the Château des Brouillards, and the old St Peter's Church

made by an

artist

(Corot's senior

by

of the

Morvan

sixteen years),

whose

"portrait"

région, Etienne

still exists.

Bouhot

Art students and

young women of relatively easy virtue, the latter often riding donkeys, flocked to the Moulin de la Galette, formerly known as the "Blute Fin." Annexed to the mill was a farmhouse-café with shrubberies and lawns for dancing.

Among

those who, some years later, were familiar figures on the Butte and in the grassy streets of Montmartre were Alphonse Karr (then a youth of twenty) and his friend at the cafés

the draftsman-lithographer Guillaume- Sulpice Chevalier

who

subsequently became famous under the pseudonym "Gavarni."

The

latter lived at 33,

—

Rue

des Rosiers, alongside the so-called

—

"Telegraph Tower" a sémaphore station that was erected in 1795 above the apse of St Peter's Church. Gavarni was first of that lineage of cartoonists, witty chroniclers in black-and-white, who up to the time of Steinlen and Forain made Montmartre their headquarters. Though an excellent pain ter, Gavarni specialized more and more as time went on in work of an anecdotal, literary order.

Gérard de Nerval,

who

lived for

some time on

the Butte,

has given us a colorful pen-picture of Montmartre in the

mid-i9th century. "Hère," he wrote, "are windmills, cabarets, rustic pleasances, quiet little streets lined with cottages, farms and half-wild gardens, meadows diversified with miniature précipices and springs gushing from the clayey soil, oases of verdure in which goats frolic under the watchful eyes of the little girls, sure-footed as mountaineers, who mind them. We even come on tiny vineyards, last reminders of that famous Montmartre wine which in the days of the Romans vied with

17

the vintages of Argenteuil and Suresnes. Every year this

quarry."

And

row of

humble

stunted vine-plants, engulfed in a elsewhere Nerval describes Montmartre in words

hillside loses a

its

might apply to a painting by Michel: "Nothing could be lovelier than the view of Montmartre Hill when sunlight is playing on its rich red-ochre soil veined with clay and plaster, on its bare rocks and clumps of trees still wearing their summer finery, on winding gullies and narrow footpaths. How many artists, after failing for the Prix de Rome, hâve come hère to seek new inspiration from this picturesque countryside!" ^ And later, when he left Dr Blanche's nursing home, once known that

as the "Folie- Sandrin," in the

Rue de Norvins,

the author of

Bohême Galante and that strange prose-poem Aurélia (he had lived for a time in the Château des Brouillards) was delighted to be back again on his beloved Butte and to forgather with his friends the tramps who had recently ensconced themselves in the huge drainpipes then being laid, "last home of the vagabonds of Paris after the closing of the quarries." It was thanks to the good offices of the French Authors' League that Nerval had obtained his release from the mental hospital in the autumn of 1854, after his third attack of insanity. A few months later ^ in the dead of a winter's night he hanged himself from a street lamp. So much for painting and literature; let us now turn to music. In 1834 Berlioz rented the house in Rue Saint-Denis, at the corner of Rue Saint- Vincent, where he lived in romantic I^a

seclusion with Henrietta Smithson, the highly temperamental

who had

consented to become his make ends meet, Berlioz did musical criticism for periodicals. Liszt and Chopin, Alfred de Vigny and Eugène Sue were among the rare visitors of the composer of Benvenuto Cellini and the Requiem for General Damrémont. But the marriage was a dismal failure; Irish actress

wife.

18

They were

at

long

last

desperately poor and, to

CAMILLE COROT. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE AT MONTMARTRE,

1

84O.

840 Berlioz parted from his wife and moved to lodgings in she took rooms in Rue Saint- Vincent facing the cerne tery in which, fourteen years later, she was destined to be interred. It was also in 1840 that Corot painted The Moulin de la Galette at Montmartre (Geneva Muséum), unquestionably the fîrst really great picture on this thème. It has a soft slate-blue

in

1

Rue de Londres, while

19

sheen flushing into pink, a délicate translucency, that holds me spellbound every time I stand before this wholly delightful canvas. Corot's houses, in particular, hâve a quality unique in the painting of his day. Built, one feels, to last for ever, beside a road eut in the chalky soil and overlooked by the windmill whose dark sails emphasize the far-flung radiance of earth and sky, thèse houses prove how vast was the révolution effected, after a long period of dark-hued painting, by that modest artist

in a

workman's smock who,

long before Utrillo, ranks of stone walls.

among

LOUIS DAGUERRE. GENERAL VIEW OF PARIS

20

folio wing

the

most

Vermeer and

sensitive painters

FROM MONTMARTRE,

CA. 183O.

ANTOINE VOLLON. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, CA. 1860.

21

CAMILLE COROT. RUE SAINT-VINCENT, MONTMARTRE, CA. 185O-1860.

22

Chronologically ail the windmill pictures mentdoned above between those of Michel and Vollon's Moulin de la Galette (Musée Carnavalet, Paris), which was painted when he was twenty-seven and had not yet fully mastered his technique. Within this period falls the General View of Paris seen from the Montmartre Windmills by Louis Daguerre who, besides being one lie

PAUL CÉZANNE. RUE DES SAULES, MONTMARTRE, 1867-1869.

23

NAPOLÉON-JOSEPH BELLARDEL. RUE d'oRCHAMPT, MONTMARTRE, 1864.

of the pioneers of photography, was no mean painter. Lastly, mention must be made of Michel' s rival, Hoguet, the painter born in Berlin of French parents whom Théophile Gautier called "the Rembrandt of the windmills." After studying under Ciceri, he went back to Germany in 1847^^. The exact date of Corot' s Rue Saint-Vincent is a moot point 1^. But we know that it was just at the time when he was

24

ARMAND GUILLAUMIN. MONTMARTRE,

1865.

beginning to shake off Corot's influence that Pissarro painted The Telegraph Tower (1863). Next year, when he was about to

move from Montmorency

to his

new home

at

La Varenne which

Saint-Hilaire, Pissarro painted his Street in Montmartre in

reveal

him

formed by

walls, houses and the road of Cézanne. Evidently attracted by painted, about 1867, his Rue des Saules, once

the interlocking planes

as a precursor

this motif, the latter

25

owned by Guillaumin, in which, as Lionello Venturi bas pointed out, tbe artist's initial conception was in advance of bis still somewbat ragged exécution. About tbis time Guillaumin and Bellardel seem to bave agreed to sbare out, so to speak, a block of bouses in Rue d'Orcbampt, one taking over tbe bousefronts, tbe otber tbe backyards. Tbese two pictures give us revealing glimpses of Montmartre in tbe days wben it was in process of being "modernized" but tbere still existed tiny gardens at tbe end of courtyards in quite tbe Dutcb style. During tbis period Sisley, wbo likewise took bis lead from Corot, painted a Vieiv of Montmartre (Grenoble Muséum) in wbicb tbe trim, new, manystoried bouses strike a contrast witb tbe green luxuriance of tbe little

orcbards.

Already tbe Sacred Hill was beginning to bave for painters wbicb was to last for well over balf a

tbat curious fascination

century. Jongkind settled tbere in 1846. After sbaring a studio witb Eugène Isabey, bis teacber, in Avenue Frocbot, be took rooms fîrst in Place Pigalle, tben at 2, Impasse Caucbois, near Place Blancbe. For over ten years Jongkind lived in tbis district and we may be sure be often painted it. Tbe watercolor self-portrait made in August 1850 sbows bim witb a portfolio under bis arm and, wearing a big straw bat, about to sally fortb in quest of subjects. Wbile in Montmartre, be struck up friendsbips witb, amongst otbers, Alfred de Dreux, Constant Troyon and Eugène Ciceri, Isabey's cousin. But Jongkind, beir of Micbel at bis best in, tbat is to say, bis watercolors and sketcbes Jongkind, forerunner of botb Impressionism and Realism and a link between tbe two scbools, was born out of bis due time. It was left to Manet and bis fellow revolutionaries, tben styled "Independents," to set on foot a movement wbose importance was recognized only many years later.

—

—

26

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUP circumstances favor WHAT and why should it

another? There

is

the birth of a

new

school of

art,

originate in one place rather than

no question

that

topography and even

climatic conditions often play a leading part; but sometimes ail

that

make

is

needed

is

for

some

artist

with a strong personality to group of young men to

a local café his forum, or for a

—

occupy a nest of studios in some barnlike building and before long the group has blossomed out into a School, winning converts and sending forth its missionaries. It was in the congenial atmosphère of the Café Guerbois that the new painting of Manet's day took its rise. From 1866 on, the painters of the Independent School who were later to be styled Impressionists and writers who championed the new peinture claire made a habit of forgathering at this famous café, located at 1 1 Grand'Rue des Batignolles (now Avenue de Clichy), on almost the same site as the present-day Brasserie Muller. By 1869 the group was at full strength. Actually it was divided into two coteries: that of the ex-students of the Académie Suisse, introduced by Bazille and Edmond Maître; and that whose leading lights were Renoir and Claude Monet. But ail alike gravitated around Manet and Degas, who were usually to be seen at the café on Friday evenings, when a table was regularly set aside for them. Occasionally Pissarro dropped in for a talk, accompanied by Cézanne who often worked with

him in he met

the country. But the latter had

—

little

liking for the

men

Guerbois "well-dressed nincompoops who look like small-town lawyers." Manet advised the members of his circle "to paint in patches of light and to 'solmizate' the scale of values," and it was now that thèse born fighters, undaunted by the abuse to which their art and even their priva te lives were constantly subjected, at the

27

mustered their forces in the cause of the new painting. Amongst them Manet, a man of gentle birth and a revolutionary despite himself, played the part of ringleader. A famous picture has immortalized the devoted camaraderie of the little group in those years of struggle. I am thinking of Fantin-Latour's canvas, The Studio at Les Batignolles, exhibited at the 1870 Salon, which shows us several of the habitués of the Café Guerbois. Despite the rather studied poses, the picture is

a success artistically, as well as being of considérable docu-

interest, including as it does remarkably good portraits of Manet and Renoir. Moreover certain novelties in the lay-out, the way some of the motifs are truncated by the edge of the canvas, foreshadow the composition à la japonaise that Degas

mentary

was

later to

It

employ so

may seem

skillfully.

surprising that Fantin-Latour did not include

himself in this picture, which he obviously intended as a sort

of "homage to Manet." Perhaps he did not wish to involve himself too deeply in the new, revolutionary art movement. pity he did not

—

A

turned out, admirable flower painter though he was. Pantin soon lost his bearings in the hazy symbolism of the Wagnerian cuit into which Edmond Maître (who often played the piano in Bazille's studio) had ail too successfully initiated him. Early in January 1868 Frédéric Bazille left the rooms he had been sharing with Renoir and Monet in Rue Visconti and moved on to 9 Rue de la Paix (now Rue de la Condamine) in the Batignolles district, where he worked hard ail day, readying The Family Reunion and a still life for the 1868 Salon. In October of the following year, on his return from Méric, near Montpellier, where he had spent the summer with his parents, Bazille invited Renoir to come and share his studio. Almost every evening the two friends dropped in at the Café Guerbois or else repaired to Fantin's studio to sit for his big canvas.

28

for, as things

stupidities hâve finally given way to those of the future," Fantin wrote to his friend Edwards, **and when the aversion for Manet has blown over, my picture will be regarded simply as a studio interior, with a painter making the portrait of a friend with other friends around him." The painter, brush in hand, is Manet, and the model sitting in front of him is Zacharie Astruc, a critic who staunchly defended the new school of painting. Behind Manet, with his hands in his pockets, is the German artist Schôlderer. Renoir, wearing a hat, is gazing at the canvas. Then corne Zola, holding his pince-nez, Edmond Maître, Bazille (his hands clasped behind his back) and Monet in the corner.

**When the present-day

THÉODORE FANTIN-LATOUR. THE STUDIO AT LES BATIGNOLLES,

187O.

29

FRÉDÉRIC BAZILLE. THE STUDIO, DETAIL: MONET, MANET, BAZILLE, 187O.

30

A

with the owner of the house was enough to décide make another move. But before settling into his new quarters (on the Left Bank, in the same house as Fantin-Latour), he "amused himself" painting the interior of his Batignolles studio, that "great grey room" ^^ where he had spent so many happy evenings with his friends Renoir, Edmond Maître, Claude Monet, Manet and Zola. He grouped them ail on his tdfï"

Bazille to

FREDERIC BAZILLE. THE STUDIO, DETAIL: EDMOND MAITRE PLAYING

THE PIANO,

1870.

31

"My own

canvas.

likeness

was donc by Manet himself," he letter. Thus we know that

proudly informed his parents in a

Manet was responsible

for the figure of Bazille,

who

is

shown on

standing, holding his palette and brushes, beside the painting

an easel which Manet and Monet are inspecting. Ail in shades of green and pink set off by the gilt frames of the pictures on the walls, this canvas, with its textural richness and the distinctive attitudes and gestures of the figures, reveals a psychological insight and an evocative power surpassing that of Fantin's picture, which indeed is slightly reminiscent of a group photo-

makes us realize Bazille's gift for pictorial conswhat he might hâve achieved had he not been killed in 1870, at the âge of twenty-nine, in the Franco-Prussian War. When the war ended, the Batignolles group, ail of whom were much distressed by the death of their generous, warmhearted friend, started meeting again, but no longer at the Guerbois, which had become unbearably noisy. Marcellin Desboutins, one of its most constant patrons, spoke ruefully of graph.

It also

truction and

"the steady stream of people in the Avenue de Clichy, the way in Wepler's, Boivin's and Père Lathuile's taverns and, on the way back, the brawling

boisterous drinking-parties across the

crowd of bar."

^2

As

laundresses,

a resuit,

plumbers and cobblers in Dutrou's the group began to patronize the

some of

Nouvelle-Athènes in Place Pigalle. this café

was

its

One of the attractions of work of Petit, a Mont-

ceiling décoration, the

martre flower-painter who was said to hâve given the Empress Eugénie lessons in watercolor painting. Often to be seen there at the "green hour" we now call cocktail- time were Manet, Degas, Georges Rivière, the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens, young Forain, Buhot, Goeneutte and, as a matter of course,

Desboutins. This artist had a studio in Rue des Dames, at the end of a courtyard "echoing," as he said, "day in day out with the din of carpenters and tin-smiths." ^* Desboutins always had

32

EDGAR DEGAS. THE ABSINTHE

(dETAIL), 1876-1877.

33

the same seat réservée! for

him

at the café

where, being a fervent

and sundry in favor of the Comte de Chambord, claimant to the throne. Degas persuaded him to pose with the actress Ellen Andrée on the café terrace for The Absinthe (1876). Both of them hâve the vague gaze characterroyalist,

he harangued

ail

of addicts of the highly potent absinthe of eighty years Women at a Café, with the houses on Place Clichy (or perhaps Boulevard de Clichy) in the background. Four years later, in 1881, when he was living at 19 bis. Rue Fontaine, he modeled in wax the famous Fourteen-year-old Damer (also known as La Grande Danseuse) of which Renoir wrote: "What superb line she has, this young istic

ago. Next year Degas painted his pastel,

—

wax and that mouth, just hinted at, how beautidone!" Degas, who was a friend of Mallarmé at the time and an occasional versifier, composed a sonnet in her honor which includes thèse lines: ballet girl in

fully

it's

Si Montmartre a donné

Roxelane

le neî^ et

la

Attentif Ariel donne à Tes pas légers de jour,

V esprit

Chine

les

et les

aïeux

jeux,

cette recrue

tes

pas

légers de nuit.

Montmartre supplied "the spirit and the lineage" of this dancer, it was also in Montmartre that Degas found models for the ballerinas who figure so often in his painting. Actually the painters who were now known as Impressionists seldom visited the Nouvelle-Athènes, with the exception of Renoir, who often made his way up the steep road leading from his studio in Rue Saint-Georges to Place Pigalle. He walked in with his usual brisk step and absent-minded air, plumped himself down in a corner and rarely joined in the gênerai conversation. He was always twiddling a cigarette between his fingers and relighting it, or "doodling on the table with a burnt match." ^^ Monet and Sisley, who lived outside Paris, If

little

34

»»i

came and Cézanne, too, was an infrequent The moment he entered the café, Manet, nothing if not inquisitive, made room for him at his side and started plying him with questions about his work questions which the astute southerner always turned with some tall story made up on the spur of the moment. George Moore who, after giving up the idea of being a painter, had broken with Cabanel, was practically never visiter.

—

EDOUARD MANET. PORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOORE,

CA. 1879.

35

whose atmosphère he has so young school of

a habitué of this

famous

well evoked in

writings and in which the

artists

found

About

liis

its earliest

café

defenders.

Renoir was finishing his portrait of Madame Charpentier, wife of the famous Parisian publisher. No sooner had he given the finishing touch to the eyelashes of that haughty patrician lady than he moved to Rue Cortot to this

time

work on

a big canvas. Already, while in Rue Saint-Georges, he had been working on a sketch of the open-air dancing at the Moulin de la Galette, which he often visited with Lamy and Goeneutte, and where he could count on meeting other friends, amongst them Gervex. There he found models who had the advantage over professionals of striking perfectly natural poses. AU the women he painted from 1875 on were young persons he met at the Moulin: milliners, dressmakers and florists who had come there to dance. Some demurred at the idea of being "exhibited" or figuring in a picture-dealer's window, but Renoir always managed to talk them round. It was hard to say No to this keen-eyed young gentleman who listened so amiably to their chatter, escorted them to their mothers' homes, brought présents to the children, then so politely requested them to pose en corsage. Renoir's art is, in fact, imbued with the atmosphère of Montmartre in that golden âge when its charm had not yet been commercialized. And what fascinated him in this little world apart, perched on a humble hill, was not so much the night life as those sunny afternoons when sunbeams played on the blonde beauty of The Swing and flickered through the leafage of the trees around the Moulin. But it was only at the instance of Franc Lamy that he came to paint that masterwork, L.e Moulin de la Galette. One

day,

when

visiting Renoir's studio,

and promptly urged

36

his

Lamy

noticed the sketch

friend to expand

it

into a full-size

The fîrst thing, Renoir decided, was to rent a room somewhere near the Moulin where he could house his big canvas after the day's work and, on occasion, he could sleep. Georges Rivière has given an entertaining account of this house-

painting.

hunting expédition.

"One morning in May 1876 Renoir and I started out from Rue Saint-Georges to try to unearth the sort of place he had in mind. We explored quite a number of Montmartre streets, climbed a séries of more or less squalid staircases, peeked into some uninviting hovels and mouldering sheds in dingy backyards, without finding anything of the kind he wanted.

"Then,

as

chance would hâve

it,

we

turned into Rue Cortot,

narrow street flanked by crumbHng walls and old-world cottages. There was no sidewalk and such drainage as there was consisted of a gutter in the middle of the street. By this time we were getting tired, our quest seemed pretty hopeless and we gave no more than casual glances at the house fronts. Then, unexpectedly, on a narrow door adorned with mouldings and scroll-work in i8th-century style, we saw a notice: Furnished Apartment to Let. One of the oldest in the street, this cottage looked as if it once had acted as the servants' quarters of some big private mansion that had long since disappeared. No sooner had Renoir crossed the threshold than he went into raptures over the garden which could be seen at the end of a long passage running through the house. There was a huge, untended lawn spangled with daisies and wild poppies. Beyond lay a tree-lined garden path and behind in those days a

it

an orchard.

"The caretaker, an old lady, gave us an amiable welcome. The apartment she showed us, located on the second floor immediately below the roof, contained two fairly large rooms, and the furniture, if scanty, was enough for a man with simple tastes like Renoir.

37

n

(i

EDGAR DEGAS. WOMEN

IN A CAFÉ AT

MONTMARTRE

(dETAIl), 1877.

This fine pastel which formed part of the Caillebotte bequest is now in the Louvre (Cabinet des Dessins). The color was laid in on a monotype of which only one copy was pulled a technique in which Degas excelled. The scène is a boulevard café in Montmartre. "We see two women seated at the entrance," wrote Georges Rivière in the first issue (1877) of the magazine L'Impressionniste, "one of them clicking her thumbnail against her teeth, as if to say 'He didn't even give me so much as thatV while her companion has laid her big gloved hand flat on the table in the foreground."

—

38

AUGUSTE RENOIR. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE (dETAIL), 1876.

39

AUGUSTE RENOIR. IN A CAFÉ, 1876-1877.

40

EDOUARD MANET. CHEZ LE PÈRE LATHUILE

(dETAIL), 1879.

41

"The Windows gave on

the garden and, crowning amenity, was a disused stable just behind the house where he could store canvases and easels. Everything, in short, was to his liking, the rent was low, and Renoir promptly took the place, moving

there

in next

morning.

"That was, for both of us, the beginning of many happy days, divided between the cottage and the Moulin where Renoir worked every afternoon on his big canvas. We used to carry it between us from his apartment to the Moulin, for ail the actual painting was done on the spot. Sometimes there were anxious moments, when a strong wind was blowing and it looked as if the canvas with its châssis would tear itself from our hands and shoot up like a kite above the Butte." ^^ Renoir's Montmartre was still in a state of pristine innocence, like a fruit just forming from a flower and as yet unplucked. True, it was already a rendezvous of aesthetes and young dressmakers' assistants, but it had not yet declined into a playground of pretty ladies and questing maies. The Montmartre Renoir knew was a rose that still had its natural hues despite the nearness of Paris and its artificial grâces; a rose still diamonded with morning dew. It was a meeting-place for lovers, an oasis of light reserved for young people who remained their unsophisticated selves in an atmosphère of carefree gaiety. And Renoir loved to watch the couples turning in the mazes of the dance, bathed in the sunlight falling through the trees around the Moulin, leaning forward to snatch a kiss or seated at a table sipping some sparkling wine, in a blue haze of pipe and cigar smoke. No other artist ever celebrated better than he the joy of living, those fleeting moments of exquisite sensation when sunlight and the season of the year conspire to give a feeling of delight; no other artist has understood so well the careless rapture of those privileged occasions and

recorded them on canvas so memorably.

42

AUGUSTE RENOIR. PLACE CLICHY, CA. 1880.

43

Thus one of the most remarkable achievements of painting had as

modem

point of dcparture a quite ordinary scène, the 'P2insi2in jemesse at play in the grounds of the Moulin de la its

And thus, as so often in Venice, so in Montmartre was achieved a magie transmutation of reality into art; indeed the change was even further-going in the latter, for while the canals of Venice hâve a mystery and dignity of their own, nothing could seem more unpromising than the rather Galette.

there

tawdry surroundings of the Butte.

When working on

this huge canvas, Renoir used to hâve meals at a nearby restaurant, "Chez Olivier," a delightfully rustic little place. If the weather was fine he sat in one of the arbors covered with Virginia creeper; if wet, in the small, meagerly furnished eating-room. Paris seemed like another world. When, in 1875, Forain had a studio at the corner of Rue Lepic and Rue Tourlaque, he spoke of his Windows overlooking "the Montmartre countryside inhabited by painters and rentiers, where you could work in

his

peace, lead a

Bohemian

life

and behave

as fantastically as

you

liked without being in the least conspicuous."

The album of photographs of Montmartre taken in those happy days which I hâve before me as I write brings out the charming rusticity and friendliness of the place. Everywhere are

little

gardens, shacks like rabbit-hutches, small, crazily built

The Impasse Girardon looks

for ail the world like a But while the Cité Maupy is still a grassy expanse fringed with cottages, the Rue du Mont-Cenis has already a somewhat cityfied appearance, and work has begun on the big Réservoir, just below the spot where the SacréCœur was soon to rise. Moreover, a number of cabarets now were springing up, successors of the famous dance-halls, the Boule Noire, the Elysée-Montmartre and the Reine Blanche, and towards the close of 1881 the Chat Noir opened its doors.

houses.

mountain

44

pass.

"Fm feeling positively lost," wrote Renoir to a friend during his trip to Italy in 1881, "at being eut off from Montmartre." In his opinion the humble s t ^r/>//^ was quite as attractive as any of the sparkling belles of Naples. By now Montmartre was by way of becoming the Mecca of Parisians on pleasure bent, and its little streets were thronged with cabs and carriages at ail hours of the day and night. AUGUSTE RENOIR. BUILDING IN PROGRESS ON THE SACRÉ-CCTrR,

TA,

T

90O.

45

TRANSIT OF VAN GOGH

WHEN under

in 1886, tired of studying at the

teachers

who

did

ail

Academy of Antwerp

they could to curb his inde-

spirit, a Dutch painter in his early thirties migrated to Montmartre (where he had already lived eleven years before ^^), it was not any interest in the nightlife of the place that led him there. Vincent van Gogh was essentially serious-minded, his protestant upbringing had taught him to frown on any sort of frivolity, and he was never an easy man to get on with. His brother Théo, who was sales-manager at a branch of the Goupil Gallery on Boulevard Montmartre and had been sending him money every month, had advised him to wait till June, when he hoped to rent a larger apartment but Vincent' s patience had worn thin. And one morning at the end of February when Théo was at work in the picture-shop, he received a note scribbled in black chalk announcing that Vincent was waiting

pendent

—

for his brother in the Salon Carré of the Louvre.

Vincent shared Theo's lodgings in Rue de Laval. They were too cramped for him to work in, so he took to going to the

"Academy" run by Fernand

who had opened it

known as Cormon, Avenue de Clichy and arranged

Piestres, better

a studio at 104

to his liking "with stacks of weapons, embroidery

fabrics cluttering

up

the corners."

On

the walls

and

hung

rich

copies

From Emile Bernard, one of his fellow we learn that "Van Gogh's bearishness intrigued us ail. He worked incessantly:

of Old Master pictures. students at Cormon's,

and self-absorption morning with the other students, painting from the model; in the afternoon, when only Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin and myself were in the studio, from Cormon's ^antiques'." ^^ After a while Vincent tired of this arrangement and when his brother moved into new quarters at 54 Rue Lepic, he went to live with him. There were three fairly big rooms, one small one in the

46

of closet) and a tiny kitchen, and Vincent had the luxury of a sofa and a slow-combustion stove to himself. He slept in the closet, behind which was a room he used as his studio. From its one and only window he could see the Moulin de la Galette, Madame Bataille's restaurant, in which he took his meals, and the landscape, not as yet built over, of the Butte.^^

(a sort

VINCENT VAN GOGH. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE,

1

886-1 888.

47

TT

Vincent was initiated into Impressionism. He of flowers, the view from his studio window and, under the influence of such open-air painters as Monet, Sisley and Pissarro, gradually rid his palette of the dark colors he had hitherto employed. "You'd hardly recognize Vincent,'* wrote Théo to his mother in the summer of 1886. "He's

At

painted

Paris

still lifes

CAMILLE PISSARRO. THE OUTER BOULEVARDS, 1879.

48

making vast progress as an artist. Also, he's much more cheerand everybody hère likes him." And Théo added that he was still quite determined to "launch" his brother. This was none too easy. Once the abrupt change in his life had ceased to operate, Vincent relapsed into his former mental instability; his nerves were always on edge and he "struck ful

VINCENT VAN GOGH. BOULEVARD DE CLICHY,

1

886-1 888.

49

ail his contacts. A rallying-point of the ImpresTheo's picture-shop was patronized by Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas, Seurat, Raffaelli. But though their canvases were on view every afternoon from five to seven (with the exception of those of Degas, who never exhibited), it was uphill work getting them approved of by the public and cri tics. Vincent loudly aired his views on art and the nefariousness of art-dealers, protesting violently against the way the Goupil Gallery was run, nagging Théo and urging him to break with his employer and start a new gallery of his own. Van Gogh' s constant présence had a bad effect on attendances at the gallery and, strong as was his sensé of the family tie, Théo began to hope that his "impossible brother" would make a move. "There are two men in him," he wrote to his younger sister. "One is marvelously gifted, gentle and sensitive;

sparks" in sionists,

the other, selfish and cruel. And the pity is that he's his own enemy; for it isn't only for other people that he makes life difficult, he does the same thing to himself."

In spring 1887, with the first fine days, Vincent started painting in the open air, usually at Asnières where (according

made triptychs of the island of La Grande showing the little taverns on the Seine bank, the boats on the river, and the gardens haunted by loving couples on Sunday afternoons. One wonders if on thèse expéditions he met Seurat who about this time was making sketches for his to his sister-in-law) he

Jatte,

A

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande fatte, hâve no évidence that any such encounter took place, but Van Gogh certainly came in contact with Emile Bernard, who lived there, and whose portrait he made. In a letter to his brother (summer 1887) he wrote: "I met Tanguy yesterday and he is exhibiting in his window the canvas l've just finished." Tanguy, a colorman with a shop in Rue big canvas

We

Clauzel,

50

was alone

in

showing

interest in

Van Gogh' s

painting.

VINCENT VAN GOGH. MONTMARTRE (LE CAFÉ DU POINT DE VUE),

I

886-1 888.

51

In this same

summer

the painter took to visiting Le Tambourin, by Corot's former model "La Segatori" and patronized by Anquetin, Bernard and Lautrec. a cabaret run

In the winter of 1 887-1 888 he made many portraits, including one of Père Tanguy and several of himself, most striking

showing him standing at his easel (according is the most lifelike of ail his self-portraits). But soon he had had enough of Paris. Because of his quickness to take offense and the demands he made on ail with whom he came in contact, he never got on well even with the Impressionists, whom on one occasion he referred to as "poor hacks." Almost the only artist he was friendly with was Guillaumin, whom he visited at his lodgings on the Quai d'Anjou. Van Gogh was downright to the point of rudeness and flared up when anyone disagreed with him. His talks with Gauguin confirmed him in his opinion that the new school had not said the last Word on art. In any case he found life in a big city too trying; he felt he needed to fînd "a quiet place where he could pull himself together and get ail the rotten wine he had been drinking out of his System." Also the climate was "too grey and cold." The truth was that Van Gogh always felt rather out of his élément in Paris. Noisy gatherings at cafés where he was always being shouted down by strident aestheticians discoursing on the laws of art suited him far less than the peaceful fields and woodlands of La Crau where the only sound was the trilling of cicadas. A man of his stamp, religious-minded and of which

is

the one

to Theo's wife, this

intensely serious, the prey of fixed ideas, allergie to the fashions

of the day and the charms of witty conversation, could feel at ease only in the vast open spaces and silence of the country. Whereas Lautrec enjoyed nothing better than listening to the chatter of slightly drunk filles de joie and young bloods who had come to sample Montmartre nightlife, ail Van Gogh desired was to be left in peace to meditate.

52

VINCENT VAN GOGH. LE PÈRE TANGUY, 1887-1888.

53

'X_%

\m^^. -/.

•"-n'HA

VINCENT VAN GOGH. LA GUINGUETTE, CA. 1886.

In February 1888 he left for the South of France, where he discovered the radiant light which was henceforth to dominate

And now it was with leaves of grass, wheat fîelds, olive and sunflowers that he began that silent dialogue which was to last until his mind gave way. Nevertheless the fact remains that Montmartre was the scène of the first flowering his art. trees

54

of

Van Gogh' s

art.

True, the

work turned out

in Paris

had not

the sweep and signifîcance of that of the Arles period; he had

not yet found in painting a means of total self-expression. Yet the varied colors and minute comma-like touches in his renderings of the Butte and Rue Lepic were a great advance on the lack-luster compositions of his youth, which reflect the somber vision of the Ramsgate schoolmaster and the pilgrim of the absolute who had worked as a lay-preacher in the Belgian "black country." Paris and Montmartre taught Vincent that painting could, and should, stand on its own feet; it had no need to be bolstered up by pious intentions like those of the English artists of The Pilgrim. He also learnt that the painter's vision is bodied forth by the physical properties of his médium and by color arrangements which in themselves sufïice to convey the artist's

émotion to the beholder. During his stay in Paris his palette brightened up, he used more vivid blues and made his light more brilliant. Sometimes, too, he employed the divisionist technique, and in gênerai his exécution became fîrmer, more adventurous than in the past. The amount of work he turned out in those two years of arduous effort is amazing nearly two hundred pictures (according to La Faille' s catalogue). Amongst :

them

are the Café du Point de Vue, that

homage

to the three

French flag, and La Guinguette, both presumably painted in Montmartre. According to Yaki, the latter depicts the garden café known as "Le Franc-Buveur," in Rue des Saules. Edmond Heuzé, however, who is an authority on the Montmartre of those days, says that Van Gogh must hâve painted this picture at the gâte of the Moulin de la Galette facing Rue Norvins. But the actual scène depicted matters little; what gives this picture its unique appeal is the meaningful gradation of tonal values by which Van Gogh has imparted to it accents of intense veracity and at the same time of almost tragic pathos, the artist's sensé of désolation in an alien world. colors, blue, white

and

red, of the

55

56

LAUTREC'S PERAMBULATIONS could those two WHAT seemingly

fellow students in Cormon's studio,

Van Gogh, hâve found to say to each other? The former, who had corne from his hometown, Albi, in the same year as Vincent, felt wonderfully at ease in the streets of Paris, where the crowds were so dense that he could pass unnoticed. His friends used to say that he looked taller seated than standing up, and Lautrec, painfully conscious of his dwarf-like stature, was much relieved to find so totally unlike, Lautrec and

that his deformity attracted little or no attention on the boulevards and in the Montmartre cabarets. Appearances notwithstanding, the scion of the ancient house of the Counts of

Toulouse and the son of the poor Nuenen pastor discovered much in common. For one thing, the kind of painting both indulged in was anathema to the public. And both alike rebelled against what Emile Bernard called "the footling school-boy art drummed into us by that half-dead, uninspiring pédagogue Monsieur Cormon," a specialist in the prehistoric. y^Lautrec spent a great part of his time in the cabarets and dance-halls which were then proliferating in Montmartre. As a resuit of its vast success, the Chat Noir had been transferred from Boulevard Rochechouart to Rue de Laval (now Rue Victor-Masse). It was still being run by its original proprietor Rodolphe Salis, a Swiss hailing from the Canton of the Grisons. He had given his cabaret a vaguely old-world atmosphère, it was equipped with Louis XIII chairs, but his speciality was the use of the latest Parisian argot sprinkled with touches of grandiloquence and braggadocio. "God created the world," he was fond of saying, "Napoléon instituted the Légion of Honor as for me, they had

;

DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. THE TRACE HORSE OF THE BUS LINE, PLACE CLICHY, 1888.

57

IVe 'made' Montmartre." That was true up to a point, but actually the "making" of Montmartre was largely due to a young chansonnier from Courtenay, Aristide Bruant, who had made his début

at the

later Bruant,

A

Chat Noir with his song la Villette, Some years who had become estranged from Salis, opened a

Le Mirliton ^o, in the premises vacated by the Chat Noir elsewhere. Bruant lived in an old house thickly surrounded by trees at the junction of Rue Cortot and Rue des Saules. For sixty-five centimes, the price cabaret of his own. Salis,

who had moved

of a glass of béer, Parisians could hâve the perverse joy of being targets for the ribald wit of this obstreperous young man. Bruant did not merely make fun of his auditors, on occasion he was bluntly rude, as when he bade them "shut their damn' traps!" if they started talking while he sang. Among the artists who bring home to us the atmosphère and spirit of Montmartre towards the close of the 1 9th century, this caustic, rough-tongued singer holds a unique place. No one has evoked better than he the sights and smells, the little tragédies and comédies of its streets no poet has succeeded better than Bruant in conjuring up to vivid life a whole district of Paris in the fîrst verse of a song more amazing still, thèse songs of his, though phrased in the argot of Montmartre, often hâve the deep-toned résonance of an anthem. Lautrec much admired Bruant and signed with an anagram Saint-La:(are, of his name ("Treclau") the cover of Bruant's the song that, sung by Eugénie Buffet, her hands in the pockets of her tattered skirt, caused such a scandai. Bruant, for his part, though he preferred Steinlen as an artist, proved his esteem for Lautrec when he forced the management of the Ambassadors to display Lautrec's poster, theater where he was performing which had been turned down by them originally. ;

;

A

—

—

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. POSTER FOR THE MOULIN ROUGE, 189I.

58

Mo.

32

L 59

33

J HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. ARISTIDE BRUANT, 1893. POSTER.

60

To

this

period belongs Courteline's description of Bruant,

"One dog, two dogs, Corduroy pants, a lapeled waistcoat and a hunting jacket with métal buttons. A red scarf in May, a red shirt in ail seasons. Under a huge, daredevil hat, a handsome face, the face of an obdurate but affable Chouan. Passers-by stop to stare and wonder 'Who the devil is that fellow?' The answer's simple: he is Montmartre, Montmartre incarnate taking the air on its doorstep. Montmartre alias Aristide Bruant." Lautrec's perambulation was only beginning. Following in the footsteps of Degas, his senior by three décades, he chose for hardly less colorful than Lautrec's poster. three dogs, top boots.

bathed in the glare of frequented nightclubs and fancy-dress balls where his physical shortcomings passed unnoticed. He was so often to be seen sketching at the Moulin de la his subjects jockeys, music-hall singers

footlights,

women

at their toilet.

He

Galette that Francis Jourdain called in contradistinction to

its

it

"Moulin de Lautrec," Moulin Rouge, "whose

the

successor, the

atmosphère of tawdry luxury was much like that of a bordello." ^^ However Lautrec was also a habitué of the latter, which was located between nos. 84 and 92 of Boulevard de Clichy on the former site of the Bal de la Reine Blanche, pulled down in 1885. At the time when the old Montmartre windmills were disappearing one by one, Zidler, an ex-butcher, had had the lucrative inspiration of building, in association with the Oller brothers, this bogus windmill at the foot of the Butte. The opening of the Moulin Rouge on October 6, 1889, was one of the great Parisian "events" of that pleasure-loving epoch. It was heralded by a poster, a little masterpiece, made by Chéret, which showed "the vendeuses d* amour pretty ladies and sportive priestesses of Venus mounted on donkeys capering in gay procession to our new shrine of love." 22 ^^d ail the élite of Paris flocked to the big new dance hall lit by flaring gas-jets, where the floorshow came up to the highest expectations. ^

61

62

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, DETAIL: DR GABRIEL TAPIE DE CÉLEYRAN, HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, PAUL SESCAU, 1892. I

THE MOULIN ROUGE, DETAIL! VALENTIN LE DESOSSE,

189O.

63

A

Renaudin who kept a bar in Rue Coquildanced there under the name of Valentin le Désossé (an allusion to his "rubber-legged" contortions), his opposite number being La Goulue. Other floor dancers bore such picturesque names as La Môme Fromage, Grille d'Egout and lière

certain Jacques

2^,

Rayon d'Or.

When his entry

by OfFenbach, Lautrec made with a group of friends, attended by an escort of

to the strains of a tune

and lusty pugilists who cleared the way for him and him from the crowd, he always created a sensation. "People stared in amazement at this queer, topheavy little man, swaying on his stunted legs like a ship at sea, with an enormous head, black, bushy beard and thick lips, eyes twinkling ironically behind the pince-nez straddling an enormous nose. He often wore check trousers, a flat-brimmed derby and, in winter, a blue frieze overcoat and a green muffler loosely knotted round his neck with the ends flapping on his chest." ^^ When in 1892 Zidler handed over the Moulin Rouge to one of the Oller brothers, Lautrec was somewhat anxious about the fate of his two big pictures hung in the lounge above the bar over which presided a wench of ample charms named Sarah. This was the time when La Goulue, whom Lautrec had known for five years (he had been présent at her fîrst appearance at the Elysée-Montmartre), was at the height of her famé and attracted crowds to see her dancing at the Moulin. "Her legs shoot up into the air, imperil the bystanders' hats, and reveal suggestively but winsomely a mass of flimsy undies," wrote a contemporary observer in the magazine Gil Blas. Two of Lautrec' s English cronies, the artist Charles Conder and the poet Arthur Symons, typical personalities of the Yellow Book era, were fascinated by the "French Can-Can." There was always a crowd of Americans and Englishmen, the latter wearing knickerbockers and smoking bulldog pipes, rubbing shoulders painters

shielded

64

with French dandies in evening dress and opera-hats, to watch La Goulue and the acrobaties of the well-trained dancers of the

famous Moulin Rouge quadrille. Amongst the latter was La Tige, most strenuous of high-kickers, whom Lautrec has immortalized in a lithograph. To make their names known to newcomers to the dance-hall, the performers of the quadrille had hit on the ingenious device of painting their names on the soles of their shoes, so as to be well in view when they did their high kicks. From 1891 on, when he was commissioned by the management to make a new poster replacing Chéret's, the Moulin Rouge was an unfailing source of inspiration to Lautrec, whose output of paintings, drawings and lithographs on this thème was nothing short of prodigious. The atmosphère now was vastly différent from that of Renoir' s Moulin, with its sunlit trees and open-air dancing. Lautrec's Montmartre is faintly sinister; under the yellow gas-jets of the Moulin Rouge the air seems vitiated, redolent of strange drugs and perfumes, and the top-hatted gentlemen above whose heads the can-can dancers swing their silk-clad ankles seem more bored than elated. Lautrec was the poet and the painter of this curious half-world.

He felt thoroughly at home with the "staff"

of the establishment,

freedom of thought and language delighted him, and it was as a boon companion of La Goulue and the rest that he greeted his aristocratie friends from the provinces and the cosmopolitan élite of Paris who nightly thronged the Moulin Rouge. their

What strikes us fîrst in Lautrec's renderings of thèse people, performers and spectators, is the magnifîeent draftsmanship, the erisp, clean line, harsh to the point of eruelty, whieh makes them live before us. But as a painter, too, he claims our admiration for the vigor of his brushwork, the originality of his color schemes, and his dextrous use of flat tints in the Japanese manner. True, Lautrec was a man of his âge, but without a trace of mannerism; his work is of the class that never "dates." 65

Many

of the large compositions inspired by the Moulin

Rouge were painted on cardboard supports and was

since the color

absorbed by the cardboard, the painting has a curious fluidity, giving the effect of movement at its most volatile. Hatchings, dottings, comma-like brushstrokes are sprinkled on the surface, which has the matness of a fresco. Often Lautrec leaves open, unpainted spaces in the composition, letting the natural hue of the cardboard set the basic tone. Ail thèse works hâve a caustic brevity of statement and a nicety of handling, seen to perfection in his small panel Jane Avril Dancing. Daughter of an Italian nobleman and a demi-mondaine, this famous cabaret dancer scored a prompt success when in 1892, at the âge of twenty-four, under the name of La Mélinite, she took the floor for the first time at the Moulin Rouge. Her élégant refinement made an admirable foil to the unabashed vulgarity of La Goulue, and Lautrec was much taken by her. She was seen at her best alone, when, surrounded by a circle of admirers, she performed a séries of whirlwind spins, "like a star of the skating rink executing figures-of-eight." ^^ Poets wrote lyrics in her honor and her exquisite dresses were the envy of Parisiennes. In London Nights Arthur Symons speaks of her "morbid, vague, ambiguous" charm and describes her as "the shadow of a smile behind the shadow of the night," dancing as the fancy took her. Her fancy took her, also, to Lautrec's studio to sit for him; she genuinely liked the smell of oil and turpentine that always hovers in the air of an atelier. Lautrec often went to the Fernando circus, and it was there he saw the circus-rider who inspired him to paint his first large-scale work (now in the Art Institute of Chicago). In 1893 he painted the clown Medrano (known as "Boum-Boum") who subsequently became so famous that the circus in Boulevard Rochechouart was given his name. It was there, too, that Seurat made studies for his (unfinished) picture, The Circus.^^ partially

:

66

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. A CORNER IN THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, 1892.

67

LAUTREC.

68

THE CLOWN BOUM-BOUM AT THE CIRQUE FERNANDO,

1893,

—

Lautrec thoroughly Balls, masquerades and café-concerts enjoyed the hectic life of Montmartre in the 'nineties. After 1895 he went less often to the Moulin Rouge, hitherto his favorite hunting-ground, and frequented other music-halls and cabarets. One was Le Hanneton, a brasserie with a spécial attraction for women, run by a certain Madame Armande; another was Les Décadents (16 bis Rue Fontaine) where he was much struck by an Irish singer, May Belfort, who wore little-girl frocks and, while performing, always held a black cat in her arms. Her costumes, ail in one color, lent themselves admirably to the flat tints Lautrec then was using in his paintings. Next came the Yvette Guilbert séries. With her first appearance at the Chat Noir the clever young singer from Nice had made an immédiate hit, and by 1891 she was the talk of the town. Audiences clamored for Xanrof 's Le Fiacre and, of the songs she herself composed, Les Demi-Vierges. In her tightfitting dress, she eut a striking figure. Lautrec's sketches bear out the description of her given by René Maizeroy, one of her earliest admirers.^^

mocking eyes of

"A

pale,

strange, unforgettable face, the

a Paris street-urchin, a long tapering neck.

A mop

of yellow hair built up like a clown's wig." She was the tells us, to wear black gloves; until now caféconcert singers had always worn white ones. Such was the young first,

Xanrof

woman who

nightly brought the house

down

at the

Divan

Japonais launched by Jehan Sarrazin, poet and vendor of olives (a bucket of which he always carried about with him), who gave Yvette her chance of trying out her new repertory. It included Maurice Donnay's monologue Eros Vanné, whose cover was designed by Lautrec. He made numerous drawings and litho-

and from every though she was to being caricatured, Yvette Guilbert was sometimes frankly outraged. "You little monster! YouVe made me look a horror!" she wrote graphs of

this witty artist, in various attitudes

angle, so brutally candid that, used

69

to him after seeing his sketch of her, emphasizing her long nose and grotesquely pursed lips as she stood before the footlights. Meanwhile where was Lautrec living ? In the heart of Mont-

martre, needless to say, always within a stone's throw, or little more, of the Moulin Rouge. After staying with his friend Grenier, he went to live with Dr Bourges at 21 Rue Fontaine, in the house where Degas had lived before migrating to Rue Pigalle. When, on the doctor's marriage, he had to quit, he shared rooms with Rachou, a painter from Toulouse, at 22 Rue Ganneron. Next, he took to working in the gardens owned by "Père Forest," where the Montmartre archery club held their meetings; hère he had his models pose for him under the sycomore and lime trees behind a timber-merchant's dépôt. In funds again, thanks to a remittance from his family, he rented a large studio in Rue Caulaincourt (at the Rue Tourlaque corner), where his witty parody of Puvis de Chavanne's Sacred Wood was given pride of place. The room was always cluttered up with piles of cartoons, sofa cushions, dancers' shoes, Japanese prints and women's hats. Finally he moved to 5 Avenue Frochot where on May 15, 1897, he gave a house- warming party. Some days later there appeared a news item in La Vie Parisienne "On the pretext of showing them his latest pictures and drawings one of our younger artists invited his friends to hâve a cup of milk (!) in his new studio." On the invitation card was a drawing by Lautrec showing him starting to milk a cow; not the same cow, however, as that which gave its name to the "Vachalcade" bovinization of "cavalcade" organized that year^s by Montmartre artists, the vache in this case being an allusion to the phrase manger de la vache enragée^ that is to say "having a lean time of it" so many an artist's fate. Among the tableaux vivants presented was The Crowning of the Muse ^^ by Gustave Charpentier, a foretaste of the delightfully romantic opéra whose second act contains a little symphony of Montmartre street-cries. :

—

—

70

—

^ili>' V^^-^4- V^Kf^^^

^'

v-'^

-m^^-'^mmx.-:--

GEORGES SEURAT. SKETCH FOR **THE CIRCUS,

71

ivr

c-^A

PIERRE BONNARD. SKETCH OF A POSTER FOR THE MOULIN ROUGE, CA. 1892.

72

BONNARD

AND THE REVUE BLANCHE WHiLE

ARTISTS

Lautrec's Aristide Bruant in his Cabaret

was being

printed off at the Imprimerie Ancourt, an announcement

U

Escarmouche of the poster was published in the magazine 31, 1893). The cover of this issue was designed by Félix Vallotton and it contained, among other reproductions, one of Bonnard's Cuirassier. Thèse two young men, Vallotton and Bonnard, belonged to the group of artists (which included Vuillard, Roussel and Maurice Denis) who were closely associated with that famous periodical the Revue Blanche. Fénéon, its secretary gênerai, who had been a close friend of Seurat, was one of the most enlightened art critics of the day, and the magazine was a godsend to the younger génération artists. In the same year, 1893, Bonnard, who had begun by having

(December

;

Rue Le Chapelais (in the Batignolles district), moved Rue de Douai. Later, in 191 3, he rented a studio in Rue Tourlaque, and round about 1925 he took rooms in Boulevard des Batignolles. It was there, on the third floor of No. 48, at the a studio in to

I am writing thèse Unes (but before the house been rebuilt), that I met Bonnard for the first time. There had agreeable, musliny cosiness in the atmosphère of the was an room, and the doors were set in tall embrasures made, one would say, to frame some graceful female nude. Bonnard showed me his drawings, kept in portfoHos in an ancient chest-of-drawers. To me he was Idndness itself, though I remember that he had rather a short way with a picture-dealer who came in while I was there. This part of Paris, the streets and boulevards around Place Clichy, always had for him the same attraction as it had for so many young men of my génération and one could feel its ambience in many of his canvases. But I also felt that in this

very spot where

;

73

phase of his life, his second flowering, so to speak, he had corne to observe men without any parti pris and see them exactly like the figures moving in "his" streets, those of his paintings and those in which he walked; and that, though for him the latter had become as trite as an old penny, he had kept the innocent vision of a child and viewed the world as through a magie casement. I could not fail to realize that I was disturbing him at his work, y et he found time to tell me much about his early days and to describe without a trace of impatience how, though he had been destined to an officiai career, he had talked his parents into letting him dévote himself to art. Thereafter I visited Bonnard several times in his studio, where he showed me many of his créations (I refrain from using the Word "productions" as being hardly applicable to pictures so spontaneous and joyfully inspired). Each brushstroke seemed vibrant with the artist's inner life as if he had put his whole being into it; and he had that gift, shared with a few great painters, of giving incidents of city Hfe, the daily activities of humble folk, a noble timelessness. The human élément in Bonnard's work is a sort of distillation of the cobbled streets of old Montmartre. That fruit-and-vegetable seller pushing his little barrow,

—

that

woman

gingerly crossing a public square, the

little

dress-

maker's assistant coming down Rue Pigalle or Rue Damrémont, the newsboy speeding down the boulevard can thèse really be the same people as those who figure in Steinlen's pictures of the humbler class? Steinlen, too, has given us (but in blackand-white) a vivid panorama of Montmartre, whose "climate" in

—

his

work

is

one of thorough-paced,

if

good-humored

socialism.

No less thanhis lithographs of cats and down-and-outs à la Rictus^ Steinlen's cartoons of Montmartre working-women, dressmakers' errand-girls, little seamstresses with pert snub-noses, washerwomen with their hair bunched in huge chignons, are masterpieces of the genre. He also produced some spirited,

74

PIERRE BONNARD. THE BOULEVARD, CA. I904.

75

HENRI EVENEPOEL. THE SPANIARD IN PARIS (iTURRINO), DETAIL, 1899.

highly effective oil-paintings, one of which (unfortunately

I hâve showing Edward VII Grand Duke Nicholas watching the can-can

not been able to trace and,

I

believe.

it)

was

a Moulin Rouge

work we nearly always fînd a "message," something of the anarchistic spirit of the Assiette au Beurre, There was nothing of that sort in Bonnard's work; it was wholly conditioned by his artistic sensibility, and if he sides with the have-nots, he shows no animosity towards the well-to-do. He dancers. In Steinlen's

depicts

human

means or 76

beings as they essentially are, irrespective of their

social status.

The raw

materials of his personages are,

one might say, the asphalt of the sidewalks, the stone of pavingblocks and even the iron of the bridge whose grated platform overhangs the tombstones of Montmartre cemetery. Though thèse people bear indelible marks of sufïering, they always seem ready to takewing towards that wonderland whichwasBonnard's spiritual home. He liked humble folk and loathed pretentiousness of any kind. For a long while I took him for a religiousminded man, and in the last analysis perhaps he was one; so évident was his gratitude to Providence for having granted him the joy of painting and creating. There were several artists of the older génération who lived in Montmartre not far from Bonnard. Degas was at 22 Rue Pigalle; Seurat's last studio before his death in 1891 was in the Passage de l'Elysée des Beaux-Arts, and he intended, so Coquiot tells us ^, to paint Place Clichy with its teeming crowds as a pendant to his Stinday Afternoon at the Island of La Grande

He worked there on several of his large pictures, notably The Circus which was left unfkdshed at his death, and to gather material for which he often visited the Medrano show. Round about 1895 Renoir lived in the Château des Brouillards, before moving down the hill to Rue La Rochefoucauld, where one of his neighbors was Bottini, who has evoked so skillfully the bars and cafés of Rue Fontaine. There was still a stretch of open country, called the Maquis, between the Moulin de la Galette and Rue Caulaincourt. It was a favorite haunt of artists wearing capes, big felt hats and peg-top trousers, dressed rather like EvenepoeFs Spaniard. Henri Evenepoel ^^

Jatte.

(a Belgian,

who had

studied under Gustave

Moreau and died made

âge of twenty-seven in 1899, the year in which he this picture) placed his subject, a typical figure of the

at the

artist

between the Moulin Rouge and the end of Rue Lepic. The Montmartre of those days, "where ail the street-girls were ravishingly pretty and heroically poor," ^^ home of the milieu,

n

"the little milliner who looked like a singing nymph and wore her flowered hat at a rakish angle," ^^ was much like the Montmartre of that romantic opéra Louise, a hymn to what was then known as "free love." You still saw people making hay in Square Saint-Pierre, "where in the evenings there forgathered ail the 'glamour girls' and their 'protectors', and a hum of voices wove through the round-dance of the May Aies. Presently, spangling the warm grass like glow-worms, tiny specks of red flashed out, as cigarettes were lighted. Then someone struck up a popular song on an accordion and ail the girls joined in the chorus." ^ And while Delmet, tenderest of chansonniers, was setting to music Maurice Boukay's Stances à Manon, a young man was performing on the piano, to the gênerai

grisette,

hilarity,

his

^''Pièces

shaped like a

PearT The young man

in

question, Erik Satie, had got his start as a hired pianist at the

Chat Noir; then, after quarrelling with Salis, had moved to the Auberge du Clou in Avenue Trudaine, where a youthful musician named Claude Debussy was captivated by his novel harmonies. And, speaking of music, we must not forget Lieds de Montmartre, words by Courteline and music by Claude Terrasse, Bonnard's brother-in-law.^^ Such was the atmosphère of the late 'nineties, so congenial to Bonnard. In painting, as in poetry and music, the new men were seeking to create vibrations and résonances of a subtler nature than the fluttering effusions of Impressionism whose swan-song was then being chanted by Pissarro in his séries of twelve views of Boulevard Montmartre, in various seasons of the year and at successive hours of the day. What thèse young

wanted was a more sustained, cohérent résonance, like Always to retain the freshness of the sketch this was the aim of such men as Debussy, Bonnard and Alfred Jarry ^^, who following in the footsteps of Verlaine,

artists

that of a held chord in music.

—

sought to render in the language of the day, with the

78

minimum

of "éloquence," the very essence of sensation. And in Montmartre as elsewhere, perhaps more so than elsewhere, there was a revolt against intellectualism.

Ail the Revue Blanche painters (and most conspicuously Bonnard) were intimistes ; far less concerned than their precursor Lautrec with the idea of "making a picture," they specialized in

PIERRE BONNARD. BOULEVARD DE CLICHY BY NIGHT, CA. I907.

79

of the little incidents that take place in the privacy of the home. Degas had pointed the way but with a misogyny that the younger men did not sharc to Bonnard^s pictures of women "taking a tub" (later, in full-sized baths), or dressing in curtained bedrooms lit by the fîrst rays of the morinteriors, glimpses

—

—

ning Sun. Vuillard's delicately wrought scènes of children and breakfast-tables laid with tablecloths in stripes of blue

and red, were painted in a house in Square Vintimille (now Place Adolphe Max) where he was living with his mother; notable in thèse pictures is the way he modulâtes Lautrec's flat tints, giving

them

a

new

vibrancy. Vallotton, a less sensitive

artist,

confined

himself to scènes of lamplit evenings, card-players, people in evening-dress. Another

member of

the group, Maurice Denis,

showed leanings towards Symbolism

in his painting,

and

also

aired his views in print.

As time went on and Bonnard's

talent ripened, he cast the of the Revue Blanche group into the shade though nothing in fact was further from his intention. "You exaggerate my importance," he told me many years later. "Fm a painter in the same class as Vallotton and Roussel. As for Vuillard, I think you're unjust towards him; he is a great decorator." In speaking thus (in connection with a book I then was writing on him), Bonnard failed to take into account how far he had outdistanced them since those early days. He forgot that Vuillard' art had come to a dead end in 1905, when, compromising with

other

artists

the taste of the day, he

how

became

—

a fashionable portrait-painter;

Denis had lapsed into didacticism and décorative panel painting, and Vallotton into a dry, disillusioned realism. He, Bonnard, was the only member of the group who had advanced from strength to strength; he was the painter par excellence of Place Clichy and Boulevard Montmartre, and his picture of the Moulin Rouge seen from the café facing it on the far side of the square,^^ is, in the full sensé of that over-worked

he forgot

80

PIERRE BONNARD. BOULEVARD DES BATIGNOLLES, I907. This canvas passed directly from Bonnard's hands into the possession of the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. The scène is one on which Bonnard must hâve often gazed from his window at No. 48 a little flower-girl hurrying home after selling out her stock, schoolboys scampering across the boulevard, and in the background the Sacré-Cœur. The taxi had not yet supplanted the fiacre and there was still that atmosphère of **Les BatignoUes'* of long ago which so enchanted Bonnard. On the right is the open space dotted with trees where a fiendishly noisy fair takes place twice a year. An eminently joyous picture, fine flower of this delightful artist's palette. :

81

term, définitive.

It is

the scène that Pierre

Mac Orlan

has con-

memories of his young days. "At the end of a dark street was it Rue Blanche? y ou saw the Moulin Rouge looming hugely, the vast wings slowly turning. And you felt yourself caught up in that mechanical gyration, which set the rhythm of the nightworld peopled by Lautrec's floor-dancers jurée!

up so well

in his

—

—

EDOUARD VUILLARD. PLACE CLICHY,

82

CA.

I9IO.

PIERRE BONNARD. PLACE CLICHY, I912.

and the street-walkers of the outer

now

half-empty boulevards

—the

as they were called by Parisians." The in ail directions, the bistros, the butter-eggs-

boulevards,

women moving

and-cheese shops with the inévitable cat dozing on a pile of gingerbreads in the window, the ragpickers from Saint-Ouen

coming down the boulevard

at

dawn

in their donkey-carts, the

on piles of rags and scrap-iron ail thèse familiar scènes of the Montmartre streets Bonnard painted with a vivacity of Une, an exactitude drivers with their hordes of children squatting

—

83

PIERRE BONNARD. RUE THOLOZE, MONTMARTRE, I9I7.

84

in the rendering of facial expressions, a lifelike

directness that to

cabaret

and forcible

my mind are incomparable. The music-hall and

shows so dear to Lautrec meant nothing to Bonnard.

He was

interested in the surging tide of people in Place Clichy speeding on their ways, framed by the dark forms of the two waiters of the Café Wepler, posted like guardian sphinxes at the entrance. With this maelstrom of richly diversifîed humanity, engulfing as it were the houses, streets, the horse-cabs, the fîrst motor-car, the sidewalks, Bonnard has composed a deeply

moving

And

picture

whose

textural richness

hardly less remarkable

is

is

a feast for the eyes.

the nightpiece formerly in the

Maurice Denis Collection. At first sight Bonnard's work may perhaps strike us as casual, loosely organized. Yet, when we look into it closely, we find that there is far less improvisation than might be supposed in thèse évocations of Montmartre. Still, he had no illusions about his limitations. One day when I was congratulating him on the sensitivity of his touch and the wonderful truth to life of his drawing, freer perhaps than any since that of Corot, he began talking about the Cubists who had made their start shortly after him, a little higher up the Hill. "Don't imagine," he said to me, "that I underrate them. On the contrary, I sometimes suspect that there's a touch of 'sloppiness' in my painting. Still, I couldn't help being what I was, and that dovetailed pictorial architecture of theirs, definitely

not for me."

however

fine,

was

THE BATEAU-LAVOIR AND IMPASSE DE GUELMA September 1900 a nineteen-year-old young man from Pablo Ruiz Blasco he was later to adopt his mother's maiden name, Picasso came to Paris for the first time, to study art. He began by camping out at 49 Rue Gabrielle with a Spanish painter, Casagemas, in a studio formerly occupied by Nonell, his compatriot. It was hère he made the acquaintance of several Catalan artists who had already found their way to Paris, one of them being Ramon Casas, a painter of scènes of Montmartre life. Meanwhile he visited picture-dealers, trying to interest them in his work, and succeeded in selling three sketches to Berthe Weill. In her gallery he met Manyac yet another Catalan who oifered to pay him a hundred and fîfty francs a

INMalaga,

— —

—

—

month

in return for his entire output.

Picasso had already

shown such

facility

and so remarkable

him "the (Maurice Utrillo's

a gift of assimilation that his friends at Paris called little

Goya." Miguel

Utrillo, the art critic

adoptive father), who did so much to promote the return to favor of El Greco, has described the Picasso of those early days as "a young man with the small keen eyes of a typical Southerner,

very self-controlled and self-assured, who paraded Montmartre wearing fancy scarfs with ultra-impressionist designs." Ail went well until Picasso' s studio companion had an unlucky love-affair, took to drink, stopped painting and talked of committing suicide. Picasso had his hands full looking after Casagemas, though he found time to visit the Louvre and the Luxembourg, look in at the Moulin Rouge and "take the air" of Montmartre. Finally he saw nothing for it but to shepherd his friend back to Catalonia. ^ Unfortunately the lure of Paris was too strong; Casagemas returned and killed himself.

86

PABLO PICASSO. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, I9OO.

In the autumn of the year he was in Paris Picasso had donc manner of Forain,

a pastel, The Moulin de la Galette^ rather in the

and a somewhat stylized Can-Can showing the joint influences of Steinlen and Lautrec whose héritage he seemed disposed to take over at this time.

During

his

visit to Paris in 1901 Picasso worked from the vague Impressionism, with small

second

in a style ranging

87

PABLO PICASSO. BAL TABARIN, I9OI.

comma-like brushstrokes,

common

in those days to such very

Marquet and Dufy, to the of his Bal Tabarin, with standing on the left against the

différent painters as Pissarro, Luce,

more developed and assured

style

the close-up of the woman undulating forms of the dancers behind her. When he was living in Manyac's studio at 150 ter Boulevard de Clichy, Picasso worked incessantly, stimulated by the prospect of an exhibition of his work, along with that of the Basque painter Iturrino, at Vollard's gallery, 6

Rue

Lafïitte.

At

this

which opened on June 24, 1901, he showed seventy^Yt pictures. There he met Max Jacob and the two young men became firm friends. Manyac's studio it figures in The Blue Room (in which we see nailed to the wall Lautrec's "May Milton" poster) contained two rooms. "The smaller was Manyac's bedroom, the larger Picasso's. The first thing you saw on entering was the big picture of The Burial of Casagemas which stood at a little distance from the back wall, like a screen put there exhibition,

—

—

to conceal something better left unseen."^^

Picasso was entering on his Blue Period. Outstanding amongst the many pictures he turned out in the next four or five months was the portrait of the art critic Gustave Coquiot. Next he began the portrait of Jaime Sabartès, The Bock, now in the Muséum of Modem Western Art in Moscow. Max Jacob often dropped in after the day's work was done and read his poems to a group of friends huddled around the sadly ineffectual studio

stove in a blue haze of pipe-smoke.

"One night we went

to the Chat Noir

— out of pure curiosity,

was by now a back number. Sometimes when managed to get tickets we dropped in at the Moulin Rouge to see the quadrille; then moved on to the Zut in Place Ravignan." ^^ The owner of the cabaret rejoicing in this odd name was Frédéric Gérard (known to intimâtes as Frédé). After placing some glasses of béer on a barrel under a lamp, whose for this cabaret

Picasso had

89

shade was thickly hung with spiders webs, he would start singing ha femme du roulier (The Carter' s Wife), accompanying himself on the guitar slung over his shoulder. There was always a huddle of young artists, sculptors, poets and chansonniers accompanied by their girl friends, and what with the heat and overcrowding nerves were frayed and sometimes the evening ended with a rough house in which knives were freely used. It was decided that the whitewashed walls of the Zut should be decorated, and Picasso agreed to lend a hand. "Corne with me if y ou feel like it," he said to Sabartès. There were two wall surfaces available and Picasso chose the smaller, leaving the other to Ramon Pichot. "With the tip of his brush he drew some female nudes in blue, in a single stroke. Then a hermit in a space he had left empty for that purpose." Finally, beside the nudes he brushed in a portrait of Sabartès, "larger than life, in the posture of an orator." ^^ The Zut no longer exists and Picasso's murais hâve, alas, shared its fate. After a second exhibition (thirty pictures and pastels) at Berthe Weill's gallery in Rue Victor-Masse, Picasso left for Barcelona. He returned to Paris with Junyer in October 1902. During the winter he was always moving from one lodging to another. Did he do moonlight flittings from his furnished rooms in Rue de Seine and Rue Champollion before coming to share his friend Max Jacob's "diggings" in Boulevard Voltaire? There is no proof of this but, if we are to believe a letter written at this time, he was reduced to burning sheets of drawings to

warm himself in an

hôtel room he was temporarily occupying.^^ In 1904 Picasso migrated from Spain to Paris for the fourth time, this time for good. He established himself at 1 3 Rue Ravignan (now Place Emile-Goudeau) in that curious hive of studios known as the "Bateau-Lavoir," where he took over the studio

of his friend Paco Durrio, sculptor and ceramist. You entered the Bateau-Lavoir by a décrépit double door and the lay-out

90

PABLO PICASSO. THE BLUE ROOM, I90I.

of the rooms was always somewhat baffling to newcomers. One of the reasons was that this ramshackle plank tenement (rather like one of those boat wash-houses on the Seine to which it owed its name) was built on a steep slope, with the resuit that the ground-floor rooms abutting on the square became top-floor rooms on the side facing the yard that gave

91

on Rue Garreau. some way down a

"Picasso's

passage,

was on the lowest

*den'

on the

door wide open and people

left his

him painting away,

One

very hot days he passed by could see

^^

of the tenants, Fernande Olivier, a buxom, warm-

hearted young

He had

who

practically naked."

floor

On

left.

woman, met him coming

a drenched kitten in his

she should accept socially," she said

it

in one stormy night. arms and laughingly suggested

as a présent.

many

years later.

"You couldn't place him "He walked about the Hill

dressed like a workman, in canvas shoes, with a shabby old cap on his head or else with his hair blowing about in the wind. But al way s one was conscious of the 'sacred fire' that burnt

power that I simply Very soon "La Belle Fernande" took to haunting the studio where the man from Malaga entertained a steady stream of Spaniards ail day long (he did his painting by night so as not to be disturbed). "A mattress on four legs in a within, and he had a sort of magnetic

couldn't resist."

corner; a small, rusty cast-iron stove with a yellow earthen-

ware basin on

it and a towel, a scrap of soap on a deal table In another corner a tiny décrépit trunk painted in black provided an uneasy seat for the caller. A cane chair, several easels, canvases of ail sizes, tubes of paint littering the floor. No curtains. In the table drawer lived a pet white mouse which Picasso looked after with loving care and showed to ail his visitors." *^ On red-letter days hashish was eaten or opium smoked. "Sitting on mats, the little group of friends passed heavenly hours." ^

beside

it.

Soon after Picasso settled in the Bateau-Lavoir, "a blueblooded little Spaniard with jet-black eyes, a near-black face and coal-black hair" ^ moved into a small, uncomfortable studio on the left of the entrance. His name was José Gonzalès (soon changed to "Juan Gris"). Almost penniless, he slept on a truckle bed with a stove-in mattress. "In spring and summer 92

he opened the two Windows overlooking the Square and settled down to work at one of them." *^ Gris lived there with Max Jacob who, at nightfall, primed with ether and wearing a monocle, would slip out like a ghost from the squalid room and go down the Hill to recite his poems to some wealthy friend. Long after, when I got to know Max, he used to speak to me with an évident nostalgia of those lean years of his youth. "I still can enjoy the silence of Rue Ravignan, broken only by the shouts of children at play. Six or eight trees on a sort of pedestal, and flights of steps flanked by shabby pubs. The Street broadens out into a square. The houses aren't hovels, not by a long shot! They're eight-storey buildings dating to the reign of Napoléon III; mornings, you see mattresses, and at ail hours sheets, hanging from the Windows. When Picasso peered down the narrow opening of Rue Berthe, he used to murmur 'Napoli!'"*^ For the paintings he made in this period he used ordinary kérosène, taken from the studio lamps, as his médium not unappropriately, perhaps, considering that it was from the life of the common people he saw around him that he drew his inspiration. He seems to hâve been particularly struck by the freedom with which the loving couples behaved, not troubling in the least about the présence of onlookers, and the way in which, locked in an embrace and silhouetted against the back-cloth of houses high and low, they seemed to form

—

monumental figure. Manolo was the only constant fréquenter of Picasso's shedlike studio. "The ceiling was supported by tremendously thick a single, grandly

too big to be real."^^ " Often, when we couldn't raise the price (thirty centimes) of a glass of béer across the way, we acted playlets of our own invention in crazy costumes, under an oil-lamp with a tin shade, hung from the cobwebbed rafters. One was *The Burial of Sarah Bernhardt' (then very much alive), another *The Prompter and the Prima Donna'

beams,

much

93

JUAN

94

GRIS. STILL LIFE

AXD LANDSCAPE (PLACE RAVIGNAX),

I915.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI. PORTRAIT OF MAX JACOB, I916-I917.

95

a tragedy of sorts. Picasso always took part in them, laughing

There was a sinister clanking as a watchdog with the Germanie name of Frika trailed its ehain beside the ramshackle wooden walls, preventing the unfortunates in the rooms below from sleeping. One of them, a poor devil always in dirty clothes, half tramp, half vegetable-hawker, was too timid to protest, but a laundress was always grumbling about us to the concierge. heartily.

This concierge, an old-young woman with a bent back, shrewd, sharp-tongued and cheerful, had taken a great liking to us which was just as well!" ^^ Max Jacob was the life and soûl of the group, and his rendering of the ballad Lena Calvé de Kerguidu was a triumph of the mock-sentimental. Picasso had introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire in the Austin Fox bar (near Saint-Lazare) which was always full of "little old English jockeys." "Guillaume was a fine figure of a man. His suits were eut in English cloth and he sported a platinum watch-chain. His shirts, however, would hâve been the better for a wash. His chin was wider than his forehead, above which rose a tuft of slightly curly, almost golden hair." In those days Guillaume saw much of "a young girl, at once naïve and quaintly sophisticated, who was studying in an art school in Boulevard de Clichy. She lived with her mother in a flat in Boulevard de la Chapelle, and her name was Marie Laurencin." Max Jacob has told us how the "new school" was launched one night when he was dining with Apollinaire, Salmon and Picasso in Matisse's rooms on Quai Saint-Michel. Matisse took a small black wooden figurine from a shelf and showed it to Picasso, who kept fondling it ail evening long. It was his first contact with negro sculpture. Next day, when Max came to Picasso's studio, he found the floor strewn with sheets of drawing paper. "On each sheet was a big drawing, almost the same: a woman's face with only one eye, a long nose joining up with the mouth, a lock of hair dangling on her shoulder.

96

GEORGES BRAQUE. THE SACRÉ-CŒUR, I9IO.

97

She reappeared on Picasso's canvases; only instead of one there were two or three. Then came Les Demoiselles

woman

d^ Avignon

a picture eight feet high."

^^,

Cubism

as

we know

it today was the resuit of many tenand sudden inspirations. It is difficult to say to open painters' eyes to the "new dimension,"

tative experiments

who was

the

first

LOUIS MARCOUSSIS. THE SACRÉ-CŒUR, I9IO.

98

but there is no question that Princet played a large part in it. "This young man was always bursting with ideas that he cast upon the wind, talking incessantly and never caring what fruit might corne of thèse stray seeds of thought." ^^ In 1905 -1906 the pioneers of the new, poetic vision of the world were a mathematician (Princet), an aesthetician (Maurice Raynal), a poet (Apollinaire) and a painter (Picasso). They usually confabulated in the Bateau-Lavoir, but sometimes in a little café on the other side of the Square, "A TAmi Emile," whose small bar-parlor was to be adorned some years later with two panels by Modigliani, the larger one being decorated by Marcoussis. Two years later (1908) Braque came in touch with Picasso. At the Salon d'Automne of that year Matisse used the words "little cubes" with référence to Braque's Houses at UEstaque (Rupf Collection, Berne). The phrase caught on and next year in Gil Blas Louis Vauxcelles spoke of "cubist eccentricities." The group increased in numbers as the years went by; besides those we hâve mentioned it included Max Jacob, Marie Laurencin, Gertrude and Léo Stein, wealthy enthusiasts for the art of the Far East and modem painting, and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler who had opened a gallery at 28 Rue Vignon. Many of them attended Picasso's studio party in 1908 (known as "le banquet Rousseau") in the Douanières honor. "The studio had been decorated with festoons of fairy lights and the guests dined offtrestle tables." ^^ The sequel has often been described: the appearance of the Douanier in his soft felt hat, with his little violin, on which he accompanied a song of his own composition, Clochettes the poem Apollinaire made up on the spur of the moment (according to one version of the story), scribbling it on a corner of the table dancing to the strains of an accordion, foll owd by libations too copious and fréquent for the equilibrium of many of the guests. \

;

99

Soon after the Rousseau Banquet the great days of Rue Ravignan were over; Picasso moved out in October 1910. "Those boys must hâve won the big prize at the lottery," one of the removers said to Maurice Raynal who supervised opérations, and there certainly was a world of différence between Picasso's "cubby-hole" in the Bateau-Lavoir and his big new studio, with an apartment facing south adjoining it, at 1 1 Boulevard de Clichy, near Place Pigalle. Pablo and Fernande had just corne back from Horta de Ebro in Spain where they had spent the summer. It was in this building, owned by Delcassé, ex-Foreign Minister (who had an apartment in it) that Picasso's Cubism took définitive form. Hère he made a séries of portraits, amongst others those of Uhde and Vollard. It was about this time that a Polish painter, Louis Markous, was introduced by Braque to Picasso and Apollinaire; the latter advised him to adopt a pseudonym: Marcoussis, the name of a small town not far from Paris.^ Parallel with Cubism, whose geometric-abstract images were essentially static, there developed, a little later, the movement known as Futurism. But whereas the early Cubists, Picasso, Braque and Gris ,*^ laid down no program and let their Works speak for themselves, the Futurists, nothing if not dogmatic, made known their aims in strident manifestos. Chief of thèse aims was that of suggesting rapid motion by means of a dynamic rhythm built up in successive touches, fusing into a more or less cohérent whole. Futurism was the only art movement of the time promoted solely by Italian artists.

However, in

its

artist

Montmartre had a large part and Montmartre that the who, along with Boccioni ^^ was to be its leading figure Paris

and

origin, since

in particular

it

was

in Paris

spent his formative years. It was in 1906 that this young Tuscan, Gino Severini, son of a ceiling-painter, came to Paris. Though he began by living

100

soon joined up with the Montmartre group, which was steadily expanding and becoming more and more international. Steinlen was Swiss, Picasso and Gris were Spanish, while Van Dongen, one of the artist colony in the Bateau-Lavoir, had corne from Holland. (At this time Van Dongen, who always worked in blue dungarees, eked out a jn Montparnasse, he very

GINO SEVERINI. NORD-SUD, I912.

•JiRCCf

lOI

scanty living

by

selling sketches

Galette and the Moulin

Rouge

made

at the

Moulin de

la

to weekly magazines.) Like

from Poland. Moreover, there was from abroad coming to try their luck at the foot of that famous basilica painted turn by turn by Picasso *^, Braque and Marcoussis the Sacré-Coeur. Apollinaire, Marcoussis hailed

now

a steady influx of

young

artists

:

GINO SEVERINI. DANSEUSES A MONICO, I913.

102

room at 36 Rue Ballu, young dressmakers and the where his neighbors were mostly cooks of the well-to-do bourgeois living on lower floors. Thèse amiable young persons saw to it that he was well fed. He Severini began by taking an attic

spent much of his time exploring the slopes of the Butte. "One day," he told me, "when I was walking up Rue Lepic on my way to the Sacré-Coeur, I collided with a dark young man of

my own

Moulin de la Galette. was wearing struck me as familiar. 'You're Italian, aren't you?' I asked. 'Sure, and so are you, unless Tm much mistaken.' Then I learnt that like myself he came from Tuscany and was living in Montmartre." The young man in question was Modigliani. He soon had had enough of living in his eyrie in Rue Caulaincourt and moved into a sort of greenhouse at the end of a little garden near the top of Rue Lepic. There he led a solitary life, surrounded by reproductions of great-master pictures nailed to the walls. His furniture was of the scantiest a bed, two chairs, a table and a trunk which served as sofa and "he always wore corduroy velvet suits and an ultra-flashy scarf." ^ He adored Leopardi's poetry, was keenly interested in philosophy and his favorite painters were Picasso and the Douanier Rousseau. A votary of "modem ideas," he had the courage of his convictions. One evening in the Spielmann restaurant on Place du Tertre he silenced two young Royalists who were throwing their weight about "Fm a Jew, and you can go to hell!" and they were too much flabbergasted to retort. Amedeo ("Dédo" to his friends) was a drug addict and regularly scoured the cafés and bars on Place Blanche and Place Pigalle in search of drugs. During this period, when so many artists were busily producing what they called "social studies," Modigliani did very little. about

The type of

âge, just in front of the

hat he

—

—

—

"I

work out

—

at least three pictures a

explained. "What' s the

good of

day

—in

my

head," he

spoiling clean can vas

when 103

nobody

will

buy

my work?" ^^ Rue

After meeting each other as

two young Italian artists became fast friends, despite Amedeo's addiction to hashish, which Gino sometimes let himself be persuaded into taking. But, averse though he might be to "spoiling clean canvas," Modigliani was not wasting his time. He was trying to wean himself from his Italian, rather provincial way of seeing, and to assimilate the techniques of drawing and brushwork then prevailing in the big city, where (as he said) one still breathed described above, in

Lepic, the

"the air of Impressionism." What was the reason for this brusque incursion of

artists

from ail over the world, eager to scale the "Sacred Hill" and set up their easels in Montmartre? Was it the renown of the descendants of the Batignolles group, the impressionist paintwho were coming more and more into favor? Personally I think that the chief attraction for thèse foreign artists was a ers,

and a delicacy of color only to be acquired under the soft, translucent skies of the Ile de France. Hence the unique appeal of La Ville Lumière, meeting-place of painters of ail nationalities, most of whom gravitated around the Sacré-Cœur. At the time when Clovis Sagot, a picture-dealer who like VoUard was backing the new men, began to show an interest in Severini's work (then somewhat neo-impressionist, as can be seen in his Springtime in Montmartre)^ Severini often went with Modigliani to visit his one and only buyer, an enterprising young man named Paul Guillaume who lived in Avenue de Villiers. Modi usually came back the richer by five or six francs, which the two friends promptly spent on a dinner before moving on to Mère Adèle's establishment or the Lapin Agile, which then was patronized oiï and on by Braque, Gris and Picasso and regularly by Fernande Olivier, Francis Carco, Pierre Mac Orlan, Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo. certain lightness of touch, a clarity

104

Dorgelès, too, was an occasional visitor. "Those of us who were not doing too badly used to bring along their girl friends, young ladies who wore their hair parted down the middle and sang bits of Pelleas while washing up the dishes." *^ This famous Montmartre café, the Lapin Agile, is situated at the junction of Rue des Saules and Rue Saint- Vincent. Formerly known as "Le Cabaret des Assassins," it was renamed in 1902 when, giving up the "Zut," Frédé took it over from Adèle, who moved her bistro a little higher up the hill. The Lapin owed its name to the cartoonist André Gill, who originally lived there and had painted on his door Là, peint A. Gill quickly corrupted into "Lapin Agile." There were often what the newspapers described as "shooting affrays" at the Lapin and in its vicinity. A chronicler of the life of old Montmartre ^^ tells us that Modigliani often used to go to visit

—

home in the nearby Rue Norvins. In we see her oddly angular and irregular

Béatrice Hastings at her several of his portraits

Max

Jacob sometimes

"out of Christian and hardly less of Modigliani, who sometimes came back fîghting drunk and started smashing up doors and Windows. It was this English girl, his "guardian angel" though there was little angelic about her, who supported Modi from 19 14 to 191 6 and enabled him to continue living in Montmartre (in Rue Boissonnade). Before moving across to the Left Bank he had left his greenhouse-studio in Rue Lepic and taken a room in the building formerly "Le Couvent des Oiseaux" at the corner of Boulevard de Clichy and Rue de Douai. The last of his various Montmartre homes was just off Place Pigalle, in Rue de l'Elysée des Beaux- Arts. When negro art came into vogue he carved a number of stone heads, showing the influence of Brancusi, the Rumanian sculptor whose acquaintance he had features.

charity" since Béatrice

made

slept there

was mortally

in the Cité Falguière.

He

also

afraid of burglars

made

designs for caryatids.

105

many of which

are

now

^^ But he found out of him and soon

in a private collection.

the handling of the chisel took too

much

reverted to painting.

Modigliani was often to be seen at the Lapin. Personally I frequented the place only a good deal later when much of its pristine glamour had departed. One evening Paulo, Frédé's son, drew my attention to some pink and white canvases hung

above the zinc bar-counter, pictures of the walls and houses of Montmartre. They were by Maurice Utrillo who was Severini's neighbor round about 1909, after the creator of Futurism had moved into the last of his Montmartre studios, at 5 Impasse de Guelma, a cul-de-sac giving on Place Pigalle. This small building, then quite new, contained fîve studios. Hère Severini painted his Danse du Pan Pan à Monico, Danseuses à Monico and Fête à Montmartre. His righthand neighbor was Raoul Dufy, who like himself was one of the fîrst occupants of the new studios and who wore in those days an élégant yellow beard. The next arrivais were Braque and his wife, who occupied two studios on the floor above. Finally, Suzanne Valadon took the ground floor studio below Severini's, accompanied by her household, consisting of André Utter with whom she was living, her son Utrillo, an aged mother and a dog. "I saw a great deal of my ground-floor neighbors," Severini told me, "though Utrillo was usually far too drunk to be good Company. Often at night I came across him in the streets of Montmartre haranguing a crowd that had gathered round him, and as he could hardly stand, I helped him home." Though it has been far les s publicized than the BateauLavoir, Impasse de Guelma was in its day a no less favored resort of vanguard artists. But only Dufy remained faithful to it till the end. He had leased the entire fîrst floor, with his studio on one side and his Hving-room on the other, and time and again I visited him there. However, apart from some early works. 106

produced when he had not yet developed a truly personal style (Shrove Tuesday on Boulevard Montmartre and Rue Lepic), Dufy made hardly any paintings of the district in which he lived. Perhaps it seemed to him that the pictorial possibilities of the Montmartre scène had been so thoroughly exploited by Lautrec and Bonnard that this source of inspiration was exhausted. Yet was there not still something left for the original artist with an observant eye? Those white walls, those ramshackle houses, those humble shops and taverns and little old-world streets were still waiting for their painter. And this Montmartre, silent, unnoticed by the sight-seer, patched with crumbling plaster, was to be Utrillo's great discovery.

MAURICE UTRILLO. THE MOULINS DE LA GALETTE,

108

CA.

I9II.

UTRILLO'S

MONTMARTRE

EVERY time she was awakened in the small hours by policemen brandishing a warrant of arrest for a "disturbance of the peace" or a bill for broken Windows, Suzanne Valadon, who now was living with Utter in her Impasse de Guelma studio, was painfully reminded of her son's disorderly way of life ^^; of the stigma of his birth, the refusai of his father (an insurance broker named Boissy) to admit paternity and Maurice's adoption by the good-hearted Spanish art critic Miguel Utrillo, a friend of Utter's. Maurice had started drinking as a boy when he formed the habit of calling in at the Café des Oiseaux (near Square d'Anvers) for a drink on his way home from school. The resuit was that before long he had to undergo treatments for alcoholism, none of which, unhappily, had any lasting effect. Nor had his mother's life been uneventful; after performing as an acrobat in a traveling circus, she had worked as an artist's model, fîrst for Puvis de Chavannes, then for Renoir (in his Dance in the City and Dance in the Country), She persuaded her son not without difïiculty to try his

—

hand

at painting,

hoping

it

would

—

take his

mind

off his disas-

trous craving for absinthe.

He began by

in thick slabs of pigment.

When, however, the family moved Rue Cortot he took to working in

from the Butte Pinson

to

painting à

la Monticelli

manner. Often he left half-finished sketches in the taverns where he spent so much of his time. Suzanne herself had been painting for many years; in 1893 she had made an excellent portrait of Erik Satie. But though "the terrible Maria" turned out drawings and etchings the vigor of whose Une found favor with Degas, she made the mistake in her oils of putting too much "muscle" into her brushwork. Still, if not a really great painter, she was definitely a "character," typical of the Montmartre of those days. Pissarro's early

109

MAURICE UTRILLO. TERRACE IN RUE MULLER

I912.

But even more typical was her son Maurice Utrillo, who was born on Christmas Day, 1883, when his mother was living in Rue du Poteau. Since buyers complained of his huge signature sprawling over the canvas she often signed his early works in her neat, clear hand. From 1905 on he lived on the Butte Montmartre. This littie spot of earth was ail his world; IIO

MAURICE UTRILLO. RUE MULLER, I909.

III

he knew by rote, and loved, its every stone, its every wall, its every by-way. "With bricks and mortar, stone or roughcast walls, tiles, asphalt and cernent he built his private paradise." ^^ When painting the roofs and the house-fronts, patterned with shutters brown or green, of his beloved Montmartre he became like a man in a trance and forgot that he was a social misfit, "a bad lot touched by grâce," an outcast whose only redeeming feature was his dévotion to his mother. He never fully realized what it was that he put into his pictures. "It was Raffaelli who impressed me most," he once told Carco, "and my fondest hope was that one day I might know my job as well as he." Suzanne Valadon protested: "Raffaelli what nonsense! There was better stuff in y ou than that!" ^^ Instinctively Utrillo used the most réceptive of ail colors, the one upon which every thing tells out most clearly: white. He mixed his white with Montmartre plaster and surrounded it with browns just kindling into buff, or interspersed it with those patches of acid green, salmon pink and fuU-bodied red which give his color-schemes their glorious depth and richness. White was Utrillo's color, and he exploited ail its nuances, every physical property of the médium, so as to make us conscious of the tactile qualities, the grained and rugose texture of old walls constantly exposed to wind and rain. Utrillo had a poet's sensé of the eternal behind everything, the timeless message of the timeworn, of surfaces that men hâve touched and soiled, patched up, replastered, scoured and repainted, génération after génération. How eloquently he has exprès sed this poetry of the weather-beaten in his views of the street leading up to the last Montmartre mill of the old house with a steep-pitched roof squeezed between the high buildings of Rue du Chevalier de la Barre; of Berlioz' "love-nest" discreetly hidden behind a massive wall; of Mimi Pinson's home with its farmhouse gâte; of Rue du Mont-Cenis and Place des Abbesses,

—

;

112

MAURICE UTRILLO. RENOIR

in a corner of

frame maker,

which we

fîrst

Utrillo offered a

S

GARDEN, I909-I9IO.

see the premises of Anzoli, picture-

to exhibit an Utrillo in his

barman

window.

When

a picture in exchange for a drink, the

it away. "No damn' use to me!" Everybody felt about his work with one exception: Clovis Sagot, who after being a clown had set up as a picture-dealer. Utrillo was glad to get five francs a picture from him, until Libaude, owner of a picture-shop in Avenue Trudaine, raised the price to twenty. Then one afternoon in 1910 Francis Jourdain and

man waved

like that

—

113

Elle Faure called in and Libaude

showed them

his Utrillos.

Jourdain was tremendously impressed, bought two of the Montmagny townscapes, showed them to Druet and persuaded the brothers Kapferer and Paul Gallimard to buy several can vases. And one fine day Octave Mirbeau walked out of Libaude's with an Utrillo under his arm.^^

MAURICE UTRILLO. PLACE RAVIGNAN, I9II-I915,

Ltt5;««

114

UL'«^o

MAURICE UTRILLO. RUE D ORCHAMPT,

I912.

—

How often was Utrillo that "graceless child of somber Saturn" as he called himself given a rough handling by the local police! Time and again César Gay, who owned a snackbar. Le Casse-Croûte (he often described himself as "Monsieur Maurice's pupil"), rescued him from custody and locked him up in a bedroom so as to prevent his drinking. But somehow Utrillo managed to slip out, and wound up with one of his

—

115

periodic stays in an inebriates' home. "Life hère

no

is

joke,

can assure you," he wrote to Gay from the Villejuif Asylum in September 191 6. "One can only grin and bear it and try not to let the depressing atmosphère get one down What wonderful books could be written about that district of Paris, my Montmartre, with its provincial nooks and corners and Bohemian ways of living It's like a little independent kingdom, with customs ail its own. How I regret the follies which hâve brought me to this pHght, and how Fd love to be seated right now in your bedroom, painting a street scène of houses with I

.

.

.

!

whitewashed walls!"

On "Free

April 11, 1920, a mock-solemn proclamation of the of Montmartre was made, a parochial décla-

Commune"

The "Free Commune" had its own du Tertre which surely might now be renamed "Place Maurice Utrillo" in commémoration of the many views of it he painted. As against the neighboring SacréCœur, with its august associations. Place du Tertre is the focal point of the everyday life of the district. The fîrst "mayor" of Free Montmartre, Jules Dépaquit, announced the séparation of Montmartre from the French State (!), and, under his auspices, the so-called "Defenders of the Butte" drew up a program which was published in the March 26 issue of La Vache Enragée. Inspired by a deep affection for the old Montmartre, playground of Poulbot's "gamins" and Willette's "pierrots," this program ration of independence.

town

hall

sponsored,

on

the Place

among

other things, the views of the "anti-sky-

scraper" partisans. In their black

skyscraper" clan

—fîgured the

list

— of members of the "pro-

Cubists and Dadaists. In short,

wearers of sloppy, wide-brimmed hats and artistically flowing ties declared war on the coïts of the Kahnweiler stable who paraded on Place du Tertre in sporting costumes. Carrying the

on the

Steinlen tradition, this

devotees of the Chat Noir and

116

Old Brigade of Montmartre, that it had stood for, must

ail

hâve watched with jaundiced eyes the rise of Montparnasse, the new art center now developing in the heart of the great city they looked down on from their hilltop. But the pictures now being produced in Montmartre were little more than amusing trifles and had nothing in common with the art of Picasso, Gris, Braque, Modigliani and Severini, or with that MAURICE UTRILLO. THE LAPIN AGILE, I913.

117

MAURICE UTRILLO. PLACE DU TERTRE,

I92O.

Max

Jacob. In any case thèse men had begun to désert the on the Butte and to spend their evenings on the Left Bank. Now was perpetrated at the Lapin Agile the famous "Boronali" hoax. (Its unavowed target was Matisse, whose art was so much resented in certain circles that you saw inscriptions on the Montmartre walls, "Matisse is deadlier than absinthe,"

of

cafés

"Matisse will drive us

118

ail

crazy.")

Some

practical jokers

had the

bright idea of tying a paintbrush to the

tail

of Frédé's donkey,

which duly figured at the Salon des Indépendants! The canvas was signed "Boronali," anagram of "Aliboron," the donkey in La Fontaine's fable. Utrillo took no part in thèse artists' feuds, but went on

lod "helping"

it

to paint a picture,

painting his beloved Montmartre, the only change being that

now

women

with big behinds. His Une became more incisive, his colors harsher, and his impasto smoother, tinged with purple. Younger than Matisse and Bonnard, and about the same âge as Picasso, he had made qui te a name for himself by 1925. People were beginning to recognize the high quality of Utrillo's townscapes, which though seemingly straightforward "views" devoid of any concern with aesthetic values, were none the less inspired, beneath the surface, with a sensibility and a feeling for color which, in his last works, linked up with the noble landscape art of Claude and Corot. Utrillo remained faithful to Montmartre. When in 1926 the three of them his mother, Utter and himself made a move, it took them no further than a house he had bought in Rue Junot, just behind the Moulin de la Galette which he had so often painted. In one of thèse many pictures of the Moulin we fînd a touch of typically Montmartroise irony hung on the right of the entrance is a shopsign: Manufactory of Artistic Pictures. Landscapes a Speciality. Applj to Maurice Utrillo V. 12, rue he

included droves of

—

—

;

Cortot, Paris i8e. Beipare of Imitations. Many years la ter, after his mother' s death Utrillo,

painters of the day,

book was being

On

and his marriage, one of the most popular French

who had become moved

to

Le Vésinet. He died while

this

November 1955, at Dax (Landes). bedroom was an unfînished canvas on

written, in

the easel in his hôtel

which he then was working yet another Rue Cortot. Thus still a vision of Montmartre that held his dying eyes

it

:

!

.

.

was

.

119

"M..on fmartre

finishedH That remark is surely as old as the Hill itself. You heard it made in the dajs of the Chat Noir and I hâve Utile douht that people often voiced the same

—as

hills

is

the Sacred

lament at the Café Guerhois and the Nouvelle Athènes. Of course changes Tvere alwajs taking place. The mndmills Michel and Rousseau painted had vanished one hy one, new houses were going up, houses that votaries

of the past described as ^^skyscrapers^^

—though

this trans-

atlantic altitude existed only in the imagination of romantic enemies of ^'progress.^^

in

Bruanfs

Ail songs,

that is left of Rodolphe Salis^ cabaret is enshrined

After heing

revived at the

Bal Tabarin

the ^^French

Cancan*^ has returned in a Moulin Rouge that Lautrec certain ly would fail to recogni^e.

The Bostock Hippodrome

is

noip

the

picture-house. Gone^ too, is the tangle of ragpickers^ huts

Moulin de

doTvn fences surrounding Renoir^ s rises forlornly

jphose

la

Gaumont

and tumble-

Galette, which still

above its mouldering floor, worn bj the feet of dancers

dancing dajs are long since done.

Like

the

Bateau-Lavoir,

and drj,^^ ^^ it has outlived its day. The Café Wepler, jvhence Bonnard painted so many a Place Clichy, is '^'renovated'' almost everj jear and the Lapin Agile '^'worm-eaten hulk of an old ship stranded high

has become a show-place for tourists doing

Dufys

death the house at j Impasse de

'-''Paris

Guelma

is

by Night.^^ Since no longer tenanted

by any painter ; a picture-framer works in the studio which once was Suî^anne Valadon" s. Utrillo, too,

had forsaken Montmartre, seemingly

for good. But in the end he has returned andfound his last resting-place in the Saint- Vincent Cemetery, ivhich he so often painted.

Where do to the

thej take us today, those long flights of steps leading

Sacré-Cœur

ivhich

Vivin

^^

up

has depicted in his daintj, linear

120

TWf:

LOUIS VIVIN. THE SACRE-CŒUR, CA. I92O.

Vivin lived in Montmartre, in Rue Caulaincourt, and exhibited regularly at the "Foire aux Croûtes" (Daub Market) near Place du Tertre. There was a time when he went to exhibit his **daubs" on the shelf of a small shop-window in the Sacré-Cœur marketplace. His works hâve the utmost deHcacy, the quality of finely built masonry, and are painted stone by stone, brick by brick, with élégant précision. The living line weaves spiderwise across the canvas. Usually **popular" art tends to be répétitive, but the pictures of this ex-postman, who with his searching eyes and shaggy beard had the look of a tramp-philosopher, hâve a distinction ail their own. Vivin painted many views of Montmartre and the Sacré-Cœur.

121

style ? Is present-day Montmartre no more than a place of piIgrimage for globe-trotters, mth a church at the highest point of Paris ^ only one sjmbol amongst others? Perhaps for the moment Montmartre" s prestige

Yet heside the new basilica. Saint Peter^s, its ancient parish

is in éclipse.

church^ perpétuâtes the legend of the martyrs.

And ive are informed that

a ivorkyard mil shortly be installed at 6j Boulevard de Clichy for the érection of a chape l dedicated to St Rita, patron saint of hopeless cases. YeSy Montmartre, the old Montmartre, is far from dead,

which lures so many foreign tourists to the Hill

nightlife

is

and

the

no criterion

of its charm. One should visit it in the daytime, preferably in early morning ivhen shutters are closed and ail is silence. I sometimes go there at that to

feast

my

Lacourière the

visit

to see how the last surviving vine is faring, farm that has outlived the changeful years, to master-engraver in his eyrie not far from the

favored hour

eyes on the

Sacré-Coeur, or to revive streets

in

my

and

my memories

taverns he loved so

ivell.

As

of the early Utrillo s in the

I walk,

old songs are bu^j(ing

head, visions of pink or white carnations rise before

the corner of

Rue

my

eyes.

At

des Saules a loving couple locked in a close embrace

shows up against the flight of steps like a single figure hewn in stone.

A young man walks briskly past me, and I can sensé his eagerness explore this

mth

his.

beginning;

^^

brave nen> ivorld^^

No,

the last

page

is

and gradually

to

supplant

not turned, a new eventful chapter

Montmartre mil always

be

Montmartre.

to

my memories is

NOTES AND REFERENCES • BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX OF NAMES LIST OF COLORPLATES TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTES AND REFERENCES ^ On the i5th of August 1534. This was the fîrst step towards thc founding of the Society of Jésus. The six companions were Francis Xavier, Diego Laynez, Alfonso Salmeron, Simon Rodriguez, Nicolas Bobadilla and the Savoyard priest Pierre Lefevre who celebrated the Mass. The keys of the chapel were made over to Inigo Lopez de Recalde, better known as St Ignatius of Loyola, by the Révérend Mother Perrette Roudlars,

the assistant sacristan. 2 The Treaty of Montmartre (February annulled and replaced by another treaty.

6,

1662) was subsequently

^ This incident, which took place on March 30, 1814, was painted by Vernet in 1820. The picture shows Marshal Moncey on horseback giving orders to the battalion commander to hold Montmartre Hill against the advancing Russians. Several well-known figures, notably the writer Marguery-Dupaty and the painter himself, may also be identified in the picture. On the building in the right background is a signboard reading

Au père

Lathuille.

* In the Cabinet des Dessins at the Louvre are two albums containing in ail 48 colored drawings by Georges Michel, mostly small, hastily jotted sketches for fuU-size pictures. There are many scènes of Montmartre and Clignancourt ; Jules Claye, a publisher of art books, had them bound together about 1874 in an album entitled Vues de Paris et de ses environs par Georges Michel. Thèse two albums were bought by the Louvre from M. Adolphe Court in April 1892 for 500 francs. The rapid, sketchy exécution of thèse little scènes (one or two brushed in so lightly that the water-

color hardly shows) foreshadows the technique of Jongkind and the Impressionists they hâve none of the Dutch attention to détail that we find in Michel's oil-paintings. ;

^

Prosper Dorbec, Uart du paysage

à la fin du Second

124

en France ^ de la fin

du

XVIII*

Empire Paris 1925. y

November

•

Le

'

Paul Yaki, Montmartre,

®

Gérard de Nerval, La Bohème

*

On

Constitutionnely Paris,

25,

terre des artistes,

1846.

Girard, Paris 1947.

galante.

January 25, 1855, in Rue de

la

Vieille-Lanterne.

siècle

^® We regret the impossibility of publishing a reproduction of The Last Windmills of Montmartre, a picture painted by Hoguet just before he left Paris. The curator of the muséum at Szczecin (i.e. Stettin, now in Poland), where it could once be seen, informs us that it disappeared during the war. ^^ The collection of old postcards in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Cabinet des Estampes), Paris, contains a card showing the subject of Corot's picture. The painting in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, depicts not Rue des Saules but Rue Saint- Vincent (the two streets intersect).

^*

François Daulte, Frédéric

Ba':(ille et

son temps.

Gène va

1952.

"

in

Marcellin Desboutins in a letter to Simonet, August 1872, published Clément- Janin's La curieuse vie de Marcellin Desboutins, Paris 1922.

Edmond

1*

de Concourt,

in Clément-Janin, op.

cit,

" Georges

Rivière, Renoir et ses amis, Paris 1921.

" Georges

Rivière, op.

"IVe taken

^'

a

little

cit.

room

in

Montmartre, a neighborhood you would

Gogh

to his brother Théo in a letter dated 1875. "It's small but it overlooks a little garden whose walls are covered with ivy and creepers." Letters to Théo, Amsterdam 1924. like,"

July

^*

No.

wrote Vincent van

6,

Emile 18,

Bernard,

Geneva

Relations

avec

Toulouse-Lautrec,

Art-Documents,

1952.

1^ Thèse détails are taken from the introduction by Mrs Van GoghBonger, sometime Theo's wife, to the Letters from Vincent van Gogh to his Brother Théo (in Dutch), Amsterdam 1924. ^^ It was for the walls of Le Mirliton that Lautrec painted his famous Quadrille de la chaise Louis XIII à r Elysée-Montmartre (1886), the first of his paintings in which La Goulue figured. In his study of Lautrec (Skira, Geneva 1953) Jacques Lassaigne points out that Bruant's influence was responsible for the "social criticism" implicit in such pictures as Gueule de Bois and la mie. In the right foreground of Le Quadrille de la chaise Louis XIII stands the character known as "Le Père la Pudeur," employed by the management to see that the bounds of decency were not overstepped in the course of the evening.

A

*^

Francis Jourdain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris 1952.

'*

Alexandre Georget,

VEcho

de Paris.

125

2^ This information is derived from the catalogue of the exhibition of Lautrec's prints and drawings held in 195 1 at the BibHothèque Nationale. M. Adhémar gives it in his note on Plate 5, the poster of La Goulue and Valentin le Désossé dancing at the Moulin Rouge (1891). Joyant, on the other hand, had described Valentin as a lawyer's debt-collector. '^'^

24

Maurice Joyant, Henri

2^

Maurice Joyant,

op.

de Toulouse-luiutrec^ Paris 1926.

cit.

The Cirque Fernando (later called Cirque Medrano) made its fîrst appearance in painting in 1879 with Degas' picture of Aliss Lala (often referred to mistakenly as "Miss Lola"), a mulatto girl well-known as a trapèze artist whose star turn was having herself shot out of a cannon. Lautrec's Circus Rider was done at the Cirque Fernando, as were many lithographs of the set published in 1899. It was also a favorite haunt of Seurat, but his large canvas The Circus was still unfinished at his death 2'*

2^

In the

"^^

On

G

June

il

Blas Illustré of July 12, 1891.

20,

1897.

2^ "O Muse of Montmartre, dainty-fingered working-girl!" Thus Emile Goudeau invoked the "Muse de la Vachalcade," Mademoiselle Marguerite Stumpp.

^°

Gustave Coquiot,

Seurat, Paris

1924.

^^ Born of Belgian parents on October 3, 1872, at Nice, Henri Evenepoel studied art at Brussels before moving to Paris. The letters he wrote when he was studying there in Gustave Moreau's studio were published in the Mercure de France (January 15, 1923). His "discovery" of Manet at the Durand-Ruel Gallery was a turning-point in his career. He knew Lautrec and was intimate with Steinlen and Forain. Among his fellow students at Gustave Moreau's studio were Rouault, Marquet and Matisse. The lastnamed often spoke to me of Evenepoel with much affection.

^2

Henri Duvernois.

^^

Clovis Hugues.

^*

Pierre

Mac

Orlan,

Villes, Paris 1929.

^^ Published in 1899 as No. i of the Panthéon-Courcelks cover illustration was a lithograph by Bonnard.

126

séries,

whose

^^ In 1896, in conjunction with Franc-Nohain, Claude Terrasse and Alfred Jarry, Bonnard started the Théâtre des Pantins, in Rue Ballu, with marioncttes (over 300) made by himself. Attendances were small, but somehow the little theater kept going. Between 1896 and 1898 the Mercure de France printed six Bonnard lithographs as covers for the programs.

^' This Moulin Rouge was the central panel of a triptych, the sides being scènes of women in huge hats and people having supper.

^^

Jaime Sabartès, Picasso

^^

Maurice Raynal, Le Banquet Rousseau^

y

portraits et souvenirs ^ Paris 1946. in

Les

Soirées de Paris^

January

1914.

15,

*®

Fernande Olivier,

Picasso et ses amis, Paris 1954.

^1

Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, Paris 1946.

*2

Max

Jacob, Naissance du Cubisme

et autres, in

Les Nouvelles

littéraire sy

1932. *3

Paris,

Gabriel Reuillard, Le cinquantenaire du Bateau- Lavoir , in Le Monde January 21, 1952.

In 19 10 Marcoussis was living at 33 bis, boulevard de Clichy. The his studio looked over the Sacré-Cœur and this is the view he painted in the picture reproduced hère. The Bateau-Lavoir stood only about a hundred yards away as the crow Aies. Max Jacob attended Mass every morning at the Sacré-Cœur and often dropped in at Marcoussis' studio afterwards. It was there, too, according to Alice Halicka (Mrs Marcoussis), that Apollinaire came one morning after a sleepless night and read the first pages of his poem Zone to Marcoussis, who later illustrated *^

Windows of

Apollinaire's Alcools. *^

José Gonzalès,

the Cubist *®

first

alias

Juan Gris.

It

was not

until 191

1

that he joined

movement.

Boccioni made his start as a painter before turning to sculpture. The manifesto of the futurist painters appeared on February 2, 19 10.

*' In 1909. This demonstrated to brilliant effect the technique of "analytical Cubism." Unfortunately we hâve been unable to discover the whereabouts of this picture, a photograph of which is owned by M. Kahnweiler. It was in 1909 that Picasso fuUy worked out the principles of the new art of which *'analytical Cubism" was the first phase. This is confirmed by Fernande Olivier and Victor Crastre {Naissance du Cubisme, Céret 1910). According to the latter it was at Horta de Ebro that Picasso made his first cubist pictures, which were acquired by Gertrude Stein.

127

^«

Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani, with a préface by Louis Latourette,

Paris 1929. ^^

Roland Dorgelès, Montmartre^ mon

^"

Paul Yaki, Montmartre,

pays, Paris 1928.

terre des artistes, Paris

1947.

This collector's most cherished memories are those of his friendship with Modigliani. I spent an unforgettable afternoon in his house looking at "Modi's" drawings and paintings. Thèse range from his earliest designs notably the caryatids and the early oils which reveal a slightly morbid sensitivity and the joint influence of Lautrec and Picasso's Blue Period, to The Violoncellist (19 10) in which Modigliani for the fîrst time showed himself a whoUy original artist owing nothing to others. It is impossible to form an adéquate idea of his work after his coming to Paris in 1906 at the âge of twenty-two, without having seen this magnifîcent collection, gathered by one of those all-too-rare coUectors who love works of art for their own sake alone, irrespective of their monetary value. A close study of the drawings in particular (there are whole portfolios of them) is indispensable for understanding the origins and évolution of ^^

—

—

Modigliani's

style.

In The Arrest, one of his very few figure paintings, Utrillo illustrated an incident that actually took place in front of La Belle Gabrielle, a cabaret run by Marie Vizier. Utrillo persisted in visiting the place, though he continually got into scrapes with one or another of the toughs who enjoyed the proprietor*s favors. The picture shows the artist about to be led away to the police-station in Rue Lambert where he was an old acquaintance of the police-force, which was constantly obliged to intervene in the drinking brawls he got involved in at ail hours of the day and night. ^2

"Francis Jourdain,

"

Utrillo, Paris 1953.

Francis Carco, Montmartre vécu par Utrillo, Paris 1947.

Besides several views of the Sacré-Cœur, done in what Jakovsky cobwebbly, fîlamentous style," Vivin painted many other scènes of Montmartre: Rue de V Abreuvoir, Rue Saint- Rustique, St Peter'' s Church, The Moulin de la Galette, The Moulin Rouge and The Place du Tertre in Winter. ^^

calls *'his

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Jean Renault

&

Henri Château, Montmartre^ Flammarion, Paris

— Georges Montorgueil, La à Montmartre^ Boudet, Paris 1899. — Lanoë & Brice, Histoire V Ecole du paysage Poussin à Millet Chasles, Paris 1901. — Erich Klossowski, Die Maler von Montmartre Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Léandre), Bard, Berlin 1903. — Charles Sellier, du vieux Montmartre^ Champion, Paris 1904. — Montmartre U Art Beau^ Paris 1907. — Bertrand Millanvoye, Anthologie Montmartre Ollendorff, Paris 1909. — F.-R. Hervé-Piraux, Histoire maisons Les temples V amour au XVI H" Montmartre^ Daragon, Paris 1910. — Lucien Lazard, Promenades à Montmartre in Le Vieux published under the direction — R. Jonquet & François of G. Lenotre, Eggiman, Paris 191 — Antoine Veuillot, Montmartre Paris 191 P ARMÉNIE, Autour moulins (Promenades à vieux Montmartre) Delattre, Paris 1922. — Jean-Emile Bayard, Montmartre plus Jouve, Paris 1925. — André Warnod, Les berceaux jeune Montmartre MontAlbin Michel, Paris 1925. — Prosper Dorbec, Uart du paysage France du XVIH' du Second Empire Paris 1925. — à Francis Cargo, De Montmartre au Quartier Albin Michel, Paris 1927. — Roland Dorgelès, Montmartre^ mon pays, Marcelle Lesage, Paris 1928. — André Warnod, Les Montmartre. Gavarni, Toulouse-Lautrec Renaissance du Livre, Paris 1928. — Pierre Mag Orlan, Rouen, Montmartre, N.R.F., Paris 1929. — Paul Lesourd, La Butte au XX^ Montmartre, Spes, Paris 1937. — Paul Yaki, Montmartre, notes and souvenirs, Girard, Paris Ed. Jean Chitry, 1947. — RoMi, rue de Rome, Paris 1950. — Francis Cargo, La époque au temps Bruant, Gallimard, Paris 1954. — Jacques Wilhelm, Les du 1897.

vie

de

de

française

(Willette,

y

J.

Curiosités historiques et pittoresques

et ses artistes ^ in

et le

des poètes de

des petites

de

galantes.

Clichy,

siècle ^

etc.^

^

PariSy souvenirs et vieilles demeures^

P.

2.

autrefois

et

aujourd'hui ^

de nos

9.

travers

le

^

hier et aujourd'hui^

avec les souvenirs de ses artistes et écrivains les

célèbre s ^

de la

parnasse^ en

de la fin

siècle

peinture.

et

la fin

^

latin^

peintres

de

Villes,

Utrillo,

etc.,

des origines

sacrée,

terre

siècle,

des artistes,

Petite histoire des cafés-concerts parisiens.

10, de

belle

peintres

paysage parisien.

Schools of Painting

—

E. Duranty, La Nouvelle Peinture, Paris 1876. G. Moore, Confessions G. Geffroy, Histoire de l'Impressionnisme, of a Young Man, London 1888. Paris 1894. John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, Muséum of Art, New York 1946. Victor Crastre, Naissance du Cubisme, Céret 19 10. Jean Leymarie, Impressionism ^ 2 vols., Skira, Geneva 1955.

Modem

— —

— —

129

Painters of Montmartre

—

Charles Clément, Géricault, Didier, Paris 1868. P. A. Lemoisne, Adolphe Tabarant, Manet, N.R.F., Paris 1947. ^ Ambroise Vollard, Renoir^ Paris 191 8. Gustave Kahn, FantinLatour, Rieder, Paris 1926. Clément-Janin, La curieuse vie de Marcellin DesboutinSy Paris 1922. François Daulte, Frédéric Ba^^ille et son temps Sir John Rothenstein, Life and Death of Conder^ Cailler, Geneva 1952. Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris^ Gallimard, London 1938. Maurice Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Floury, Paris Paris 1946. Francis Jourdain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Tisné, Paris 1952. 1926. Jacques Lassaigne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Skira, Geneva 1953. Pierre Courthion, Bonnard, peintre du merveilleux, Marguerat, Lausanne 1945. Alfred Sensier, Georges Michel, Lemerre, Paris 1873. Léo Larguier, Georges André Salmon, Modigliani, Paris 1926. Michel, Delpeuch, Paris 1927. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani, préface by Louis Latourette, Paris 1929. Gino Severini, Jacques Lipchitz, Modigliani, Flammarion, Paris 1954. Tutta la vita di un pittore, Garzanti, Milan 1956. Jaime Sabartès, Picasso, Alexandre Cirici-Pellicer, Picasso portraits et souvenirs, Paris 1946. Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses avant Picasso, Cailler, Geneva 1950. Picasso, documents iconographiques, préface and notes amis, Paris 1954. Catalogue of the 1955 Picasso by Jaime Sabartès, Cailler, Geneva 1954. Georges Rivière, Renoir Exhibition, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. Adolphe Tabarant, Maurice Utrillo, et ses amis, Floury, Paris 1921. Francis Cargo, Montmartre vécu par Utrillo Bernheim, Paris 1926. Pierre Courthion, (with 22 gouaches by Maurice Utrillo), Paris 1947. Maurice Utrillo, Marguerat, Lausanne 1948. Francis Jourdain, Utrillo, Braun, Paris 1953. Vincent van Gogh, Brieven aan ^ijn Broeder, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1924.

Degas Pion, Paris 1954.

—

—

—

—

— —

—

—

—

— —

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

— —

INDEX OF NAMES Académie Suisse

Adhémar Albi

BoissY, Utrillo's father

27.

Bonaparte Joseph

126 (note 23).

Jean

BoNNARD

57.

Ancourt, printer 73. Andrée EUen 34. Anquetin Louis 46, 52. Antwerp, Academy of Fine Arts 46. Anzoli, picture-frame maker 113. Apollinaire Guillaume

96, 99, 100,

127 127 (note 44); Alcools (note 44); Zone 127 (note 44). Argenteuil 18. Arles 5 5 102,

Armande Madame Asnières

69.

50.

Astruc Zacharie 29. Avril Jane (La Mélinite)

120, 127 (notes 43, 44). 27/32, 125 (note 28; The 12); The Family Réunion Studio 30/32.

Bazille Frédéric

Belfort May 69. Bellardel Napoléon-Joseph Rue d'Orchampty Montmartre

;

2sià.

18, 19, 112; Benve18.

Requiem

125 (note 18).

Hermann Rupf Collection

Bernheim-Jeune Gallery

99.

81.

18.

BoBADiLLA Nicolas 124 (note i). BocciONi Umberto 100, 127 (note 46).

;

hy Night 79; Place Clichy

Montmartre

75; Boulevard des Boulevard de Clichy

The Cuirassier

73; 83; Rue Tholo:

Georget Alexandre, UEcho

(note 23).

76. 29.

Eudes Father 10. Eugénie, Empress 32. Evenepoel Henri 77, 126 The Spaniard

d'Histoire

et

19.

Kiln

107, 120; Rue Lepic 107; Shrove Tuesday on Boulevard Montmartre 107. DuRAND-RuEL Gallery 126 (note 31).

DuRRio Paco 90. DuvERNOis Henri 126

Geneva, Musée d'Art

Che-

Windmills 125 (note 10).

Holland loi. Horta de Ebro (Catalonia) (note 47). Hugues Clovis

100, 127

126 (note 33).

133

lÉ

Ile-de-France

Paintings:

104.

Impressionism

11, 26, 27, 34, 48, 50,

52, 78, 87, 104, 124 (note 4). IsABEY Eugène 26.

Iturrino Francisco

Jacob Max

89, 90, 93, 95, 96, 99, 105, 117, 118, 127 (note 44); Naissance du Cubisme et autres in Les Nouvelles Littéraires (1932) 127 (note 42).

Jeanron Philippe- Auguste JoNGKiND Johann-Barthold

36). 14.

11, 26,

Jourdain Francis

61, 113, 114; Toulouse-Lautrec (Paris 1952) 125 128 note 21); Utrillo (Paris 1953) (note 53). JoYANT Maurice, Henri de ToulouseLautrec {?2ins 1926) 126 (notes 23,

Kahnweiler Daniel-Henry 99,116, 127 (note 47); Juan Gris (Paris 127 (note 41). 1946) Kapferer brothers 114. 17.

122. 55.

Belfort

69;

The Moulin Rouge

134

(note (note

20).

May 58,

M

ilton

59, 65;

i).

LiBAUDE, 114. Liszt Franz 18. Louis XIV, King 8. Loyola, St Ignatius of 7, 124 (note i). LucE Maximilien 89. Lyons, Musée des Beaux- Arts 125 (note II). Pierre

82, 104; Villes 126 (note 34). Magazines and Papers: Ami du Peuple %\ Assiette au Beurre 76; Le Constitutionnel 124 (note 6); Escarmouche 73; Le Gil Blas Illustré 64, 99, 126 (note 27); Impressionniste 38; Le Mercure 126 (note 31), de France 127 (note 36); Le Monde 127 (note 43); Les Nouvelles Littéraires 127 (note 42) The Pilgrim 5 5 Revue Blanche 73; Les Soirées de Paris 127 (note iiG', La Vie 3 9) La Vache Enragée

U

U

U E

;

;

Parisienne

89;

i).

103. picture-dealer 113,

;

46, 52, 57/70, 79, 80, 82, 85, 87, 107, 126 120, 125 (notes 18, 20, 21), (notes 23, 24, 25, 31), 128 (note 51); Posters: Aristide Bruant 60, 61, 73;

May

56, 57.

(Paris 1929)

90.

Lacourière, master-engraver La Faille J. B. de. Van Gogh La Fontaine Jean de 119. Lamy Franc 36. Lassaigne Jacques 125 (note Laurencin Marie 96, 99. Lautrec Henri de Toulouse-

The The

;

Mac Orlan

24, 25).

Karr Alphonse

;

Clown Boum-Boum at the Cirque Fernando 66, 68; Corner in the Moulin de la Galette 67; Gueule de Bois 125 (note 20); Jane Avril Dancing 66; The Moulin Rouge 62, 63 Quadrille de la chaise Louis XIII à r Elysée-Montmartre 125 (note 20); The Trace Horse oj the Bus

Laynez Diego 124 Lefevre Pierre 124 Leopardi Giacomo

4).

JuNYER Sébastian

125 (note 20);

Rouge 63; Cir eus -Rider 66, 126 (note 26)

Line^ Place Clichy

55).

Japanese prints 65, 70. Jarry Alfred 78, 127 (note

124 (note

A la mie

Moulin

the

A

76, 89.

Jacque Charles 14. Jakovsky 128 (note

At

70.

Maître Edmond Maizeroy René, Blas Illustré

27/29, 31.

in the Gil 69, 126 (note 27). article

Mallarmé Stéphane 34. Manet Edouard 26/32,

126 35, (note 31); Che^i le Père Lathuile 41 ; Portrait oJ George Moore 35.

Manolo Manuel Martincz Manyac Pedro 86, 89. Marat Jean-Paul, U Ami

Offenbach Jacques

93.

du Peuple

8.

Marcoussis Louis (Louis Markous) 99,

100,

127 (note 44); The

102,

Sacré-Cœur

64. 92, 100, 104, 127 (note 47); Picasso et ses amis (Paris 1954) 127 (note 40). Oller brothers 61, 64.

Olivier Fernande

Marguery-Dupaty 124 (note 3). Marquet Albert 89, 126 (note 31). Matisse Henri

96,

118,

99,

126 (note 31). Méric, near Montpellier

Michel Georges

119,

23, 24, 26, 120, 124 (note 4); View 1 1 of Montmartre

Millet Jean-François MiRBEAU Octave 114. Modigliani Amedeo

14.

99, 103/106, 117, 128 (notes 48, 51); Portrait of

Max Jacob ^^\The Violoncellist 128 (note 51). MÔME Fromage, La

Sacré-Cœur

86;

10, 44, 45, 81, 97, 98,

102, 103, 104, 116, 120, 121, 122,

127 (note St Peter's

128 (note 55); 44), 16, 17, 122, 128 (note

55); Saint Vincent Cemetery

1

20

;

BatignoUes

27/29, 31, 32, 73, 81, 104; Belleville 13; Clignancourt 16, 124 (note 4); Montparnasse

101,117.

64.

MoNCEY Marshal 9, 124 (note MoNET Claude 27/32, 34, 48, Monticelli Adolphe Montmorency 25. MooRE George 35.

(note II),

Musée du Luxembourg

28.

10, 11, 13, 14, 18,

MoREAu Gustave Moscow, Muséum

Bibliothèque Nationale 125 126 (note 23); Louvre II, 15, 46, 86, 124 (note 4); id.. Cabinet des Dessins 124 38, (note 4); Musée Carnavalet 23;

Paris,

98.

3).

50.

109.

Avenue de Clichy 27, 32, 46; Avenue Frochot 26, 70; Avenue de Ségur 1 3 Avenue Trudaine 78, 1 13 Avenue de Villiers 104. ;

;

77, 126 (note 31).

Modem

Boulevard des BatignoUes 73, 81; Bd de la Chapelle 96 Bd de Clichy ;

West-

34, 49, 61, 79, 89, 96, 100, 105, 122, 127 (note 44); Bd Mont-

Galette 3, 4, 17, 19, 21, 23> 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 47, 55, 61, 65, 67, 77, 87, 102, 103, 108, 119, 120,

martre 46, 78, 80; Bd Rochechouart 57, 66; Bd Voltaire 90. Butte Pinson 109. Chaussée des Martyrs 14, 16.

ern Art

Moulin de

of

89. la

128 (note 55).

Cité Falguière 105 Cité Maupy 44; Château des Brouillards 17, 18, ;

Napoléon Napoléon

57. III 93.

77-

Neo-Impressionism 104. Nerval Gérard de 17, 18; Aurélia 18; La Bohême Galante 18, 124 (note

Nice

8).

69, 126 (note 31).

NiCHOLAS, Grand Duke

Nonell Isidro Normandy 12.

86.

76.

Impasse Cauchois 26; Impasse Girardon 44; Impasse de Guelma 86, 106, 109, 120.

Passage de l'Elysée des BeauxArts 77. Place des Abbesses 112; Place Blanche 26, 103; Place Clichy 34, 43, 56, 57, 73, 77, 80, 82, 83, 85,

135

i2o; Place des Hirondelles (now Christiani) lo; Place Pigalle 26, 32, 34, 100, 103, 106; Place Ravignan 89,94,114; Place du Tertre 103, 116, 118, 121, 128 (note 55).

Rue

Quai d'Anjou 52; Quai SaintMichel 96. Rue de l'Abreuvoir 128 (note 55);

Rue Ballu 103, 127 (note 36); Rue Berthe 93; Rue Blanche 82; Rue Boissonnade 105; Rue Caulaincourt 70, 77, 103, 121; Rue Champollion 90; Rue Le Chapelais 73; Rue du Chevalier de la Barre 10, 112; Rue Clauzel 50; Rue de Clichy 8; Rue Coquillière 64; Rue Cortot 36, 37, 58, 109, 119; Rue des Dames 32; Rue Damrémont 74; Rue de Douai 73, 105; Rue de l'Elysée des Beaux-Arts 106; Rue Fontaine 34, 69, 70, 77; Rue Ganneron 70; Rue Carreau 92; Rue Junot 119; Rue Laffitte 89; Rue Lambert 128 (note 52); Rue Laval (now Rue Victor-Masse) 46, 57; Rue Lepic 44, 46, 55, 77, 103/105; Rue de Londres 19; Rue du Mont-Cenis 112; Rue 8, 44, Muller iio, m; Rue Norvins 18, 24, 26, 55, 105; Rue d'Orchampt Rue de la Paix (now Rue de 1 5 la Condamine) 28; Rue Pigalle iio; 70, 74, 77; Rue du Poteau Rue Ravignan (now Place Emile Goudeau) 90, 93, 100; Rue La Rochefoucauld Rue des 77; Rosiers 17; Rue Saint-Denis 18; Rue Saint-Georges 34, 36, 37; Rue Saint-Rustique 128 (note 55); Rue Rue

Gabrielle

86;

;

Saint- Vincent

8,

18,

19,

22,

24,

105, 125 (note II); Rue des Saules 23» 25, 55> 58, 105, 122, 125 (note II); Rue de Seine 90; Rue Tholozé 84; Rue Tourlaque 44, 70, 73 ;

136

Rue Victor-Masse

90; Rue de la 124 (note 9); Rue Vignon 99; Rue Visconti 28. Square d'Anvers 109; Square Saint-Pierre 78; Square Vintimille

Vieille-Lanterne

(now

Place

Adolphe Max)

80.

Petit Eugène 32. Pfannstiel Arthur, Modigliani (Paris 128 (note 48).

1929)

Picasso Pablo 93,

96,

86,

98/104,

87, 89, 90, 92, 117, 119, 127

(notes 38, 40, 47), 128 (note 51); Bal Taharin 88, 89; The Blue Room 89, 91; The Bock (Portrait of Jaime Sabartès) 89; The Burial of Casagemas 89; Can-Can 87; Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 98; The Moulin de la Galette 87; Portrait of Gustave Coquiot 89; Portrait of Vollard 100; Portrait of Uhde 100.

PiCHOT Ramon

90.

Pissarro Camille 27, 48, 5 0,78, 89, 109 The Outer Boulevards 4 8 Street in Montmartre 2 5 The Telegraph Tower 2 5 PouLBOT Francisque 116. Princet, mathematician 99. Puvis DE Chavannes Pierre 70, 109. ;

;

;

Rachou Henri

70.

Raffaelli Jean-François 50, 112. Ramsgate 5 5 Raynal Maurice 99, 100; Le Banquet Rousseau in Les Soirées de Paris (January 15, 19 14) 127 (note 39).

Rayon d'Or Realism

64.

26.

Rembrandt

14, 24.

Renoir Auguste 27/29,31,34,36,37, 42,44,45,65,77, 109, 113, 120, 125 (notes 15,

1

6)

;

Building in Progress on

Sacré-Cœur 45 Dance in the City 109; Dance in the Country 109; In a Café 40; The Moulin de la Galette 36, 39; Place Clichy 43; Portrait of M^^ Charpentier iG\ The Swing 36. the

;

Reuillard

Le

Gabriel,

naire du Bateau-Lavoir in

127 (note 43).

(January 21, 1952)

Rictus Jehan 74. Rivière Georges

32, 37; article in

U Impressionniste

amis (Paris

cinquante-

Le Monde

1921)

38; Renoir et ses 125 (notes 15,

SiMONET

125 (note 13).

SiSLEY Alfred

RoDRiGUEZ Simon 124 (note i). RouAULT Georges 126 (note 31). RouDLARS Perrette 124 (note i). Rousseau Henri (Le Douanier) 99,

47).

116, 74, 76, 87, loi, (note 31); Moulin Rouge 76. 58,

Stevens Alfred 32. Stumpp Marguerite Switzerland

View of Montmartre 12, Roussel Ker-Xavier 73, 80.

Suresnes

103,

Ejfect.

RusTicus, St 7. RuYSDAEL Jacob-Isaac

14.

89, 90; Picasso^ portraits et souvenirs (Paris 1 946) 127

78, 120.

(note

i).

Salon 1868 28; Salon 1870 28; Salon d'Automne 1908 99; Salon des Indépendants 119. 64.

Sarrazin Jehan

69.

A

Szczecin (Stettin, now in Poland), Muséum 125 (note 10).

Père

50, 52, 53.

Tapie de Céleyran Gabriel 63. Terrasse Claude 127 (note 36); Lieds de Montmartre 78; PanthéonCour celle s 126 (note 35). Théâtre des Pantins 127 (note 36). Théophile, article in Le Constitutionnel 14, 124 (note 6). Tige, La 65.

Thoré

Toulouse

70.

Uhde Wilhelm

26.

100.

Utrillo Maurice 14.

Seurat Georges 30); The 26); Island of

64; London Nights

29.

30, 91.

Sensier Alfred 13, Sescau Paul 63.

18.

18.

Troyon Constant

78, 109.

Schôlderer Otto Segatori, La 52.

126 (note 29).

12.

Symbolism 80. Symons Arthur

Tanguy

(note 38).

Sagot Clovis 104,113. Salis Rodolphe 57, 58, Salmeron Alfonso 124 Salmon André 96.

Satie Erik

Sue Eugène

17,

126

66.

13.

Sabartès Jaime

Seine

View of

Smithson Henrietta 18, 19. Spain 90, 100. Stein Gertrude and Léo 99, 1 27 (note

127 (note 39). Rousseau Théodore 14, 120; Storm

Sarah

50;

Steinlen Théophile- Alexandre

16).

100,

34, 48, 26.

Montmartre

50, 73, 77, 126 (note Circus 66, 71, 77, 126 (note Sunday Afternoon on the

La Grande Jatte 50, 77. Severini Gino 100, 103, 104, 106, 117; Danseuses à Monico 102, 106; Fête à Montmartre 106; Nord-Sud loi; Springtime in Montmartre 104.

20, 86, 104, 106/ 128 (notes 52, 53, 54); The Arrest 128 (note 5 2) The Lapin Agile 117; The Moulins de la Galette 108; Place Ravignan 114; Place du Tertre 118; Renoir' s Garden 119; Rue Muller 113; Rue Cor tôt Rue d'Orchampt 115; Terrace III in Rue Muller iio,

120,

122,

;

;

Utrillo Miguel 86., 109. Utter André 106, 109, 119.

137

1 Valadon Suzanne

104, 106, 109, 112, 120; Portrait of Erik Satie 109.

Valentin Le Désossé Renaudin) 63, 64, 126 Vallotton Félix 73, 80.

Van Dongen Kees loi. Van Gogh-Bonger M.^^

(Jacques (note 23).

50,

52,

125 (note 19); Letters from Vincent van Gogh to his Brother Théo (Amsterdam 1924) 125 (notes 17, 19).

Van Gogh Théo

46, 48, 49, 50, 125 (notes 17, 19). Van Gogh Vincent 46/55, 57, 125, (notes 17, 19); Boulevard de Clichy 49; Im Guinguette 54, 55; Montmartre (Le Café du Point de Vue) 51, 5 5 ; The Moulin de la Galette 47 ; Le Père Tanguy 52, 53; Portrait

of Emile Bernard 50. Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, La

Vauxcelles Louis Venice

25.

Asylum 116. Villon François 10. Vincent of Paul, St 8. ViviN Louis 120, 121, 128 Villejuif

(note 55);

The Sacré-Cœur 121, 128 (note 55); The Moulin de la Galette^ The Moulin Rouge^ Rue de r Abreuvoir^ Rue SaintRustique^ St Peter's Church^ The Place du Tertre in Winter 128 (note 55). ViziER Marie 128 (note 52). VoLLARD Ambroise, Gallery 8, 100, 104.

VoLLON Antoine, The Galette

VuiLLARD Edouard Clichy

Wagner

Moulin de

la

21, 23.

73,

80;

Place

82.

Richard

28.

Weill Berthe, Gallery 86, Willette Adolphe 116.

90.

99.

Xanrof, Le Fiacre (song) Xavier Francis 124 (note

44.

Venturi Lionello 26. Verlaine Paul 78.

Vermeer Jan 20. Vernet Horace 14, 124

Yaki Paul (note 3);

1947) 128 (note 50).

ZlDLER

Vigny Alfred de

Zola Emile

18.

i).

55; Montmartre^ terre des

artistes (Paris

Défense of Paris at the Clichy TollGate 9, 14, 124 (note 3). Vésinet, Le 119.

69.

61, 64. 29, 31.

124 (note

7),

THE COLORPLATES BAZILLE, Bazille,

Frédéric (i 841-1870). 1870. Louvre, Paris

The

Studio, détail: Louvre, Paris

BELLARDEL, Montmartre

BONNARD, Rouge,

The

Edmond

Studio, détail: Monet, Manet,

30

Maître playing the Piano, 1870. 31

Napoléon-Joseph (1831-?). Rue d'Orchampt in 1864. (10^4x12%^) Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

Pierre (i 867-1947). Sketch of a Poster for the 1892. (10^x7%") ca.

Hillman Collection,

1904.

New

(32^x16%^) York

Boulevard de Clichy by Night, Maurice Denis Collection

ca. 1907.

Mr

.

24

Moulin

ca.

The Boulevard,

at

•

72

and Mrs Alex L. 75

(iô^AxiS'/bO Formerly 79

Boulevard des Batignolles, 1907. (18x22%^) Private Collection, 81

Paris

Place Clichy, 191 2. (55x801/20 Private Collection, Paris

Rue Tholozé, Montmartre, F. Colin Collection,

BOUHOT, ca.

Mr

83

and Mrs Ralph

New York

84

Etienne (1780-1862). St Peter's Church, Montmartre,

1825. (11 '/s

BRAQUE,

191 7.

(26x13720

...

XI 33/8") Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Georges (1882). The Sacré-Cœur, 1910.

16 (21 72X16%'')

Private Collection, Roubaix

97

CÉZANNE,

Paul (18 39-1 906). Rue des Saules, Montmartre, 18671869. (12Î/2X16V8O Georges Renand Collection, Paris

....

23

COROT,

Camille (1796-1875). The Moulin de la Galette at Montmartre (détail), 1840. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva .

.

The Moulin de la Galette at Montmartre, 1840. (io%xi3%'') Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva Rue Saint-Vincent, Montmartre, ca. 1850-1860. (i^YzXi^Vi") Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons

3

19

22

DAGUERRE,

Louis (1787-185 1). General View of Paris from Montmartre, ca. 1830. (9x14720 Musée Carnavalet, Paris .

.

20

139

DEGAS, Edgar

The Absinthe

(1834-1917).

(détail),

1876-1877.

Louvre, Paris

Women

33

in a Café at

Montmartre

(détail), 1877. Pastel

Louvre (Cabinet des Dessins),

type.

EVENEPOEL, détail,

on Mono-

Paris

38

Henri (1872-1899). The Spaniard in Paris Musée des Beaux- Arts, Ghent

(Iturrino),

1899.

FANTIN-LATOUR,

Théodore (18 36-1 904). The Batignolles, 1870. (8oy4Xio6") Louvre, Paris

GÉRICAULT, Théodore

(i 791-1824). (i9%x24''') Louvre, Paris

The

76

Studio

at

Les 29

Plaster Kiln,

1

822-1 824. 15

GRIS, Juan 191

5.

(i 887-1927). Still Life and Landscape (Place Ravignan), (45%X35") Walter and Louise Arensberg Collection,

Muséum

of Art, Philadelphia

94

GUILLAUMIN,

Armand (i 841-1927). Montmartre, (ziViXz^Yz'') Private Collection, Geneva

MANET,

Edouard (i 832-1 883). Portrait of George Moore, ca. Mrs Ralph J. Hines Collection, New York

(253/4X32")

Chez le père Lathuile Tournai

MARCOUSSIS, (15x20^2")

(détail),

1879.

25

1879.

...

35

Musée des Beaux- Arts, 41

(1883 - 1941). The Sacré-Cœur, Alice Halicka Collection, Paris

Louis

Mme

1865.

1910.

98

MICHEL,

Georges (1763-1843). View of Montmartre. (7x113/4''') Watercolor Drawing. Louvre (Cabinet des Dessins), Paris .

MODIGLIANI, Amedeo

(1884-1920). Portrait of 1917. (3672 X23y2''') Private Collection, Paris

Max

.

Jacob, 191695

PICASSO, Pablo (1881). The Moulin de la Galette, 1900.(24 14 x 34^20 Collection of Mr and Mrs J. K. Thannhauser, New York .

Bal Tabarin, 1901. (27^2 x Bradford, Pa

The

Blue

Washington

140

Room,

21'')

1901.

By Courtesy of Mr

11

.

87

T. E. Hanley, 88

(20x241/2")

Phillips

Collection,

91

Camille (1830-1903). The Outer Boulevards, 25340 Musée Marmottan, Paris

PISSARRO, (21 Î4x

RENOIR, Auguste

(i

841-19 19).

The Moulin de

la

1879.

48

Galette (détail),

1876. Louvre, Paris

In a Café, Otterlo

1

39

876-1 877. (i3y4Xii'')

Rijksmuseum KrôUer-Mûller, 40

Place Clichy, ca. 1880. (z4ViXziy/') Collection of the Rt. R. A. Butler, London

Hon. 43

Building in Progress on the Sacré-Cœur, ca. 1900. (12% x 16 14") Dr A. L. Mayer Bequest, Bayerische Staatsgemàldesammlungen,

Munich

45

ROUSSEAU,

Théodore (1812-1867). Storm Effect. martre. (9x14") Louvre, Paris

SEURAT,

View of Mont12

Georges (1859-1891). Sketch for **The Circus," 1891.

(2iy2Xi8'0 Louvre, Paris

SEVERINI, Gino

(1883). Collection, Milan

71

Nord-Sud, 191 2. (19^4x25") Emilio

Jesi

loi

Danseuses à Monico, 191 3. (34^2X4672''') Private Collection,

Geneva

102

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, of the Bus

Line,

Henri de

Place

(i

Clichy,

864-1901). The Trace Horse 1888. (321/4x20^2") Private

Collection, Paris

56

Poster for the Moulin Rouge. La Goulue, 1891. (761/2x48") R. G. Michel Collection, Paris

59

Bruant in his Cabaret, R. G. Michel Collection, Paris

60

Aristide

1893.

(5oX36y8'0

The Moulin Rouge, détail: Valentin le Désossé, Courtesy of Mr Henry P. Mcllhenny, Philadelphia At the Moulin Rouge, détail: Dr Gabriel Tapie de

Poster.

1890.

By 62

Céleyran,

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Sescau, 1892. By Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

A

Corner in the Moulin de la Galette, 1892. (40x39'') Mrs Chester Dale Collection, New York

Mr

63

and

The Clown Boum-Boum at the Cirque Fernando, 1893. (2272X14^2") Mrs Chauncey McCormick Collection, Chicago

67 68

141

UTRILLO, ca.

191

Maurice (1883-1955). The Moulins de (28%x2o%'') Private Collection, Paris

Galette,

la

108

1.

Terrace in

Rue

Muller,

1912. (19^x24'') Private Collection,

Bern

Rue

iio Muller,

1909. (iSy^xi^Vi')

Private Collection, Paris.

Mr

By

Ravignan, 1911-1915. (z^ViXzSVz") Grégoire Tarnopol, New York

By Courtesy of

Rue d'Orchampt, 1912. Tarnopol, New York

The

Lapin

Agile,

(21

191

Courtesy

114

X28%") By Courtesy of

Mr

Grégoire 115

3.

(22%X29y8'0

Private

Collection,

Montreux (Switzerland) Place

du

117

Tertre, 1920. (i9y8X23%'') Private Collection, Zurich

VAN GOGH,

Vincent (18 5 3-1 890). The Moulin de

47

Boulevard de Clichy, 1886-1888. (181/4x21%'') V. W. Van

Gogh

Amsterdam

49

Montmartre (Le Café du Point de Vue),

By Courtesy of

1

886-1 888. (17

y*

x 13

1/4")

the Art Institute of Chicago

Le Père Tanguy,

887-1 888.

118

Galette,

la

1886-1888. (15x18'') Private Collection

Collection,

m

of 113

Place

Mr

.

Garden, 1909-1910. (21x313/4") Grégoire Tarnopol, New York

Renoir*s

x 28 y*")

51

Musée Rodin,

Paris

53

....

54

Horace (1789-1863). Défense of Paris at the Clichy Toll-Gate (March 30, 1814), 1820. (38y8X5iy4") Louvre, Paris

9

La Guinguette,

1

ca.

(3 6

y*

1886. (i9%X33y2") Louvre, Paris

VERNET,

VIVIN, Louis (1861-1936). The Sacré-Cœur, Van der Klip Collection, Paris

VOLLON,

ca. 1920.

Antoine (1833-1900). The Moulin de

(2o3Ax28%'') 121

la

Galette, ca. 1860.

(i2y2Xioy4") Musée Carnavalet, Paris

VUILLARD, Edouard

(i

868-1 940). Place Clichy seen

vard des Batignolles, ca. 19 10. (30% x 37 Jacques Salomon Collection, Paris

142

21

y4")

from Boule-

Distemper Painting. 82

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

7

THE FIRST PICTURES OF MONTMARTRE

II

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUP

27

TRANSIT OF VAN

GOGH

46

LAUTREC'S PERAMBULATIONS

BONNARD AND THE REVUE BLANCHE ARTISTS THE BATEAU-LAVOIR AND IMPASSE DE GUELMA UTRILLO'S

MONTMARTRE

57

... .

.

73

86

IO9

CONCLUSION

120

NOTES AND REFERENCES

I24

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I29

INDEX OF NAMES

I5I

LIST OF COLORPLATES

I39

THIS VOLUME THE SIXTEENTH IN THE COLLECTION

THE TASTE OF OUR TIME WAS PRINTED BOTH TEXT AND COLORPLATES BY THE

SKiRA COLOR STUDIO AT IMPRIMERIES REUNIES

S.A.,

LAUSANNE

FINISHED THE FIFTEENTH DAY OF

MARCH

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX The

plates were engraved by

Renouât d

et

Guezelle, Paris

except for that on page 35, engraved by

Photogravure Reymond, Lausanne.

Photographs were taken by Louis Laniepce, Paris (pages by

9, II, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 48, 54, 56, 59, 60, 79, 81,

82, 83, 95, 97, 98, III, 121), Basel (pages 3, 19, 45, 4'j, 94, 102, iio, iiy, 118), by Claudio Emmer, Milan (page loi),

Hans Hinz,

by Henry B. Beville, Washington (pages 35, 51, 62, 63, 6y, 68, 75, 84, 8j, 88, 113, 114, 115). Photograph on page 49 obligingly lent by the magazine Du, Zurich.

PRINTED IN SWITZERLAND

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TASTE OF OUR TIME

MONOGRAPHS »MCO

- BOSCH - EL GRECO FRANCESCA - BOTTICELLI GIOTTO - CARPACCIO - BRUEGEL - GOYA VELAZQUEZ - REMBRANDT - MANET DEGAS - CÉZANNE - RENOIR - GAUGUIN LAUTREC - VAN GOGH - ROUAULT MONET - MODIGLIANI - MATISSE - DUFY PICASSO - CHAGALL - KLEE - BRAQUE LÉGER - MIRÔ - CHARDIN

FR

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PIER

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iJELLA

Forthcoming

BONNARD

THE GREAT ART REVOLUTIONS ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM (2 VOLUMES) CUBISM - FAUVISM - SURREALISM Forthcoming

COURBET AND REALISM

FAMOUS PLACES AS SEEN BY GREAT PAINTERS MONTMARTRE - VENICE PARIS IN THE PAST PARIS IN OUR TIME

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J.

!.

in the United States by

LD PUBLISHING COMPANY WEST IIOTH STREET CLEVELAND 2, OHIO

>3I

35JÎ3î3i533

FAMOUS PLACES AS SEEN BY GREAT PAINTERS

You know and love the Montmartre Tertre, the

Sacred Heart

of Utrillo, the Place

basilica, the

Moulin de

la

du

Galette

innmortalized by Renoir, the Moulin

Rouge where Lautrec

was

Van Gogh discovered.

a nightiy visitor, the Montmartre

But what about the Clichy

toll-gate, painted

Vernet, where Napoleon's troops

What about

made

by Horace

their last stand?

the countrified Montmartre of Georges Michel,

the quarries of Géricault and the windmills of Corot? For you this

book

will

recreate the gatherings

in

Batignolles quarter of Paris where Impressionism

the

was

born, the old "Bateau-Lavoir" of the Cubists, the affable, familiar Paris of Bonnard. Painters

guide of

the

in

this stroll

Romantics

and poets are your

through time from the Montmartre to

the

Montmartre

Utrillo

THE TASTE OF OUR TIME

Printed

in

Switzerland

knew.