I began this article
thinking I would recount a relatively straightforward tale about the work of an
eccentric woman artist first encountered five years ago in a biographical film.
But as I explored, more revelations appeared, reminders of the horror of war in
Europe and the discovery that the father of the other extraordinary woman in
the story died in Auschwitz. Especially poignant
in a week that marks the75th anniversary of the liberation of that terrible
death camp and the departure of the UK from the EU.
Last Saturday morning, I set off in the chilly darkness to
catch the 07. 52 Eurostar from St Pancras, to meet up with friends and fellow
Francophiles from business group Women in
Property. This is our annual, spirit boosting trip to Paris, which began
some ten years when one of the group commented that for the price of a decent dinner
in London, we might just as well go to Paris for lunch. As she put it, “We can
talk shop on the way there and go shopping before we come back.”
The essential elements are lunch at a charming yet
affordable restaurant in the fashionable 1st Arrondissement, where
the owners always welcome us warmly, especially when we turn up in years marred
by terrorists, strikes and demonstrations. Then follows a choice of retail or
cultural therapy (sometimes both are achieved). Recently the role of cultural
attaché has fallen to me, resulting in the discovery of idiosyncratic but
interesting museums, always in wonderful buildings, as befits our group of
constructive women. Last Saturday proved to be no exception.
Revived by coffee, croissants and conversation we arrive on
time and are relieved to find that the predicted lull in transport and power
strikes seems to be holding. The more sporty members of the party declare they
will walk from the Gare du Nord to work up an appetite, others head for the
taxi queue. After an excellent lunch,
half of us head off for the Left Bank and the Musée Maillol, the other to the
shops.
The reason for choosing this museum is that it is showing an
exhibition of naïve painters, including the extraordinary self-taught artist
Séraphine Louis, also known as Séraphine de Senlis. I discovered her by chance a few years ago after
buying the DVD Séraphine to add to my
European cinema collection, in the belief that a film that won seven French
AcademyAwards was probably worth watching. As indeed it was, with an
extraordinary performance by Belgian actress Yolande Moreau in the title role.
Born in 1864, Séraphine was orphaned by the age of seven and
brought up by her older sister until she was old enough to earn a living, first
as a shepherdess, then as a cleaner and finally as a housekeeper for middle
class families in the town of Senlis. She was totally absorbed by a passion to
paint, inspired by her religious faith and a deep love of nature. She painted by
candlelight on the floor of her cramped attic room, on any material she could
find, often using colours made from plants and soil. Her meagre earnings made canvas and paint a
luxury. This obsession and hermit like existence, not surprisingly, led to her
reputation as an eccentric.
By chance, in 1912, wealthy art dealer Wilhelm Uhder was visiting
friends in Senlis and saw a still life painting of apples that Séraphine had
given to the family. He persuaded her to show him her attic full of paintings
and was so impressed that he gave her financial support, support that ended
just two years later, when as a German, he was forced to leave France at the
outbreak of the First World War.
When Uhde returned to France in 1927, he discovered that
Séraphine was still alive and still painting. With his support she produced
dramatic, large (some two metres high) rich fantasies of intensely repeated and
embellished floral arrangements. At the age of 65 she was the highlight of an
exhibition in Paris arranged by Uhde, called ‘Painters of the Sacred Heart.’
Séraphine de Senlis became the leading naïve painter of the day and a very
wealthy woman. Tragically this wealth caused a mental breakdown and just three
years later, in 1932 she was committed to an asylum where she stayed, unable to
paint, until her death at the age of 79. Meanwhile Uhde and his rich clients
lost most of their money in the Great Depression.
Séraphine’s work continues to be exhibited, with its
extraordinary colours as vivid as ever, made from secret ingredients that she
never revealed. So with this story in mind, I search out the works in Musée
Maillol - and they don’t disappoint. The only woman artist in the exhibition, she
holds her own alongside the exuberant Henri Rousseau (also championed by Uhde)
as the forerunners of the ‘modern primitives.’
But there is more to come. We learn that the Musée Maillol
exists because of the determination of another exceptional woman. Born in
Moldova to a Jewish family, Dina Vierney fled the country as a child during the
Russian Revolution, arriving with her musician parents in Paris, where her
father found work as a piano accompanist to silent films. At the age of 15 she became
the muse of one of the most influential and successful artists and sculptors in
France, Aristide Maillol. He saw in her the embodiment of the ‘eternal
feminine’ and she also inspired other artists including Matisse, Bonnard and
Dufy. She was not only beautiful but an artist, singer and film actress – the
first of her three husbands was a successful film director.
When the Second World War broke out, Maillol and his family
moved to his house in Banyuls, on the South West coast near the border with
Spain. Dina followed in 1940, just before the Germans invaded France. There she
joined the resistance movement, helping to transport refugees across the
Pyrenees to safety in Spain. A hazardous occupation, particularly for a Jew, she
was arrested in Marseilles but released with the intervention of Maillol and Henri
Matisse. In 1943 she moved to Paris and one day, on the way to have lunch with
Picasso, she was caught up in a Gestapo raid. After six months in prison,
suffering torture, she was released after Maillol appealed to Arno Breker,
Hitler’s official sculptor.
Tragically, the next year Dina lost not only her natural
father (who died in Auschwitz) but also Maillol, the man she regarded as her
second father. He was killed in a car accident in Banyuls in August 1944, whilst
she was in Paris celebrating the liberation of the city. In researching this
story, I came across a detailed article in The
Irish Times that put forward the theory that Maillol did not die in a car
crash but was murdered by French resistance workers who had not forgiven him
for his friendship with Arno Breker. Whilst this friendship tarnished Maillol’s
reputation, Dina was unhesitating in speaking up for Breker after the war ended
and helped in the rebuilding of his career.
Regardless of the cause, Maillol’s death at the age of 89
brought an end to his ten year platonic relationship with Dina. She inherited
his estate, and immediately set about becoming a patron of the arts, gifting twenty
of Maillol’s full size bronze sculptures of herself to the State (insisting
they be displayed in the Tuileries Gardens) and opening a successful art gallery.
The culmination of her commitment to honouring the memory of Aristide Maillol
was to create a museum for his works and to display exhibitions of the
significant artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Which brings us back to the building we
visited at the beginning of this story.
Musée Maillol began in 1739 as an structure in the Rue
Grenelle in the 7th Arrondissement, to contain the extravagant Fountains of the Four Seasons. Then the
nuns who owned the land began adding buildings behind the curved façade to
create a convent. During the French Revolution the convent was auctioned and
the building sold to various individuals as private residences and was listed
as a national monument. By the 19th
Century the apartment building had become home to artists and writers.
In 1951 it was recognized as a cultural and festival
building, not only full of artists and writers but with a cabaret aptly called
La Fontaine de Quatre Saisons on the ground floor, which launched the careers
of many musicians and actors including Maurice Bejart and Yves Montand. Among
the tenants was Dina Vierney, who spent the next thirty years acquiring all the
apartments in the building, with the objective of creating a museum in memory
of Aristide Maillol.
She achieved this in 1995, when President Mitterand formally
opened the museum. She not only displayed Maillol’s works, and recreated his
studio, but also displayed those from her extensive collection. She hosted
exhibitions by exciting contemporary artists including Diego Rivera and Frida
Kahlo, Morandi, Basquiat, Bacon, Keith Haring, Poliakoff, Rauchenberg,
Kandinsky – and Séraphine Louis, the woman who started me on this fascinating
trail.
Dina Vierney died in 2009, two days before her 90th
birthday, leaving the museum and her extensive collection of art in the care of
a Foundation run by the two sons from her marriage to the sculptor Jean
Lorquin.
Two extraordinary women, different but interlinked. Séraphine Louis: painter, visionary and
independent woman. Dina Vierney: muse, artist, singer, revolutionary, film
star, patron of the arts and a woman of property. What is there to learn from
their stories?
-
skill and determination are not enough
-
money helps, but managing wealth is difficult
-
the support of champions and mentors is
essential.
And at a time when two generations have enjoyed peace in
Europe, a reminder of the havoc caused by war.
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