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THE TASTE OF Ol

Famous Places as se. Painters

MONTMARTREText by Pierre Courthion

64 COLOR PLATES

OLD MONTMARTRE:THE WINDMILLS, THE COUNTRY VILLAGE

GEORGES MICHEL - HORACE VERNET - GÉRICAULT

THÉODORE ROUSSEAU - COROT - BOUHOT - VOLLON

DAGUERRE - BELLARDEL

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUPAND THE RISE OF IMPRESSIONISM

BAZILLE - FANTIN-LATOUR - MANET - CÉZANNE

GUILLAUMIN - DEGAS - RENOIR - PISSARRO

VAN GOGH'S MONTMARTRE

NIGHTLIFE AND THE CIRCUS

LAUTREC - SEURAT

THE REVUE BLANCHE PAINTERS

BONNARD - VUILLARD

ROUND ABOUT THE PLACE RAVIGNANAND THE LAPIN AGILE

PICASSO - BRAQUE - GRIS - MARCOUSSIS

MODIGLIANI - SEVERINI

THE MONTMARTRE UTRILLO KNEW

Distributed in. the

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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 COMPANY2231 West iioth Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

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

Library of Congress Cataîog Card Number : j6-yp2i.

Famous Places as seen by Great Painters

This new group of volumes in "The Taste of OurTime" séries reveals how much some spots of earth,

some famous cities, owe to painters who hâve lovedthem, and how many artists hâve discovered in a

spécial harmony between skies and buildings the

secret of a new light, new ways of painting. Withits 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 andmusicians 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 lowerslopes glitter with the lights of Montmartre's night-

life. And many a painter of genius has evoked the

richly varied aspects of the very différent worldsthat intermingle on this famous hill.

GEORGES MICHEL - THEODORE ROUSSEAU - GERICAULTBOUHOT - DAGUERRE - COROT - VOLLON - CÉZANNEBELLARDEL - GUILLAUMIN - FANTIN-LATOUR - BA2ILLE

DEGAS - MANET - RENOIR - VAN GOGH - PISSARRO

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC - SEURAT - BONNARD - EVENEPOELVUILLARD - 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 it is no ordinarj suburb ; though a reluctant victim of the tentacular

development of Paris, Montmartre bas lost notbing of its ^^personality^''

none of tbe glamour of a legendary past tbat is a curions mixture of the

chronique scandaleuse and martjrology.

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 Decius (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

remains 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 "plaster 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

abhesses whose memory survives in the name of one of its public squares.

The convent was famous ail over France—almost^ indeed^ too famous ;

gifts poured in from ail parts of the countrj and in this atmosphère of

luxurj the marais of the nuns deteriorated. We mil not dwell on the

stay that gayest of monarchs Henri IV is reputed to hâve made in the

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 imposed by Louis XIV, the latter united the

upper convent mth the Abbaye in a single 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

daughters to the wealthy officiais n^ho had 'follies^^—i.e. country

pleasure-houses—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,

^"^Mount Marat^^ fatled 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 Montmartre millers making a last, desperate stand beside

the Blute Fin mill (so named for the fineness of its flour) . // was

there that ten years later Dehraj^ ajoung man who had heen ivounded

in the Battle of the Butte, set up a dance-hall, after converting the old

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

down ivith 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 Le Petit Château-Rouge in Place des Hiron-

delles (noiP Rue Christiani) that the movement leading to the Révolution

of ^48 began; and, again, on March 18, i8yi, the Rue du Chevalier

de la 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

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

décided 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 this

mingling of faith and frivolity, of Villonesque loose living mth high

courage, combinedmth apropensityfor mllful eccentricity, verging on the

grotesque, almost in the spirit of the late Middle Ages. And there is

no doubt that it had acquired the réputation of a danger spot for the

inoffensive bourgeois at the beginning of the ipth century, when Georges

Michel, Montmartre"s first landscape-artist, was painting its windmills.

GEORGES MICHEL. VIEW OF MONTMARTRE.

THE FIRST PICTURES OF MONTMARTRE

IN Georges Michel, born in Paris on January 12, 1763, we hâve

a not 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

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

painter, Bruandet, who after throwing an unfaithful mistress

from a window went to cover in the Forest of Fontainebleau,

THEODORE ROUSSEAU. STORM EFFECT. VIEW OF MONTMARTRE.

12

where he turned 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 ori-

ginality of his scènes of Belleville and Montmartre, that thick

impasto in which we sensé his joy in modeling, were lost onhis contemporaries. Equally unrecognized were the freshness

and delightful ease of his crayon sketches, often imbued with

a fine feeling for vast 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 myviews and how little a signature means to me. In fact I makea point of never signing 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 washis 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.

A 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

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" wind-

mills 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 knownas 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 earth-

bound 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 we hâve

a juster estimate of the artist Michel really was: one who on

many occasions, in his simple way, anticipated the achievements

of the Barbizon Schook

In 1820 when Géricault was living in the Chaussée des

Martyrs, one of his neighbors was Horace Vernet, his elder by

two years, who, loyal Bonapartist 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 in the early 'twenties, "his paintbox hooked to the pommel

14

THÉODORE GÉRICAULT. THE PLASTER KILN, 1 822-1 824.

We learn from Clément, Géricault's biographer, that one day when the

artist 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 dustunder 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 hepainted this admirable little picture" now in the Louvre, a work which

foreshadowed what was later to bc called Realism.

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 whose "portrait"

made by an artist of the Morvan région, Etienne Bouhot(Corot's senior by sixteen years), still exists. Art students and

young women of relatively easy virtue, the latter often riding

donkeys, flocked to the Moulin de la Galette, formerly knownas 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

at the cafés on the Butte and in the grassy streets of Montmartre

were Alphonse Karr (then a youth of twenty) and his friend

the draftsman-lithographer Guillaume-Sulpice Chevalier whosubsequently 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 Montmartretheir headquarters. Though an excellent painter, 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. Weeven 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 humblehillside loses a row of its stunted vine-plants, engulfed in a

quarry." And elsewhere Nerval describes Montmartre in wordsthat 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 summerfinery, on winding gullies and narrow footpaths. How manyartists, after failing for the Prix de Rome, hâve come hère to

seek new inspiration from this picturesque countryside!" ^ Andlater, when he left Dr Blanche's nursing home, once knownas the "Folie-Sandrin," in the Rue de Norvins, the author of

I^a Bohême Galante and that strange prose-poem Aurélia (he

had lived for a time in the Château des Brouillards) wasdelighted to be back again on his beloved Butte and to forgather

with his friends the tramps who had recently ensconced them-

selves 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

seclusion with Henrietta Smithson, the highly temperamental

Irish actress who had at long last consented to become his

wife. They were desperately poor and, to 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;

18

CAMILLE COROT. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE AT MONTMARTRE, 1 84O.

in 1 840 Berlioz parted from his wife and moved to lodgings in

Rue de Londres, while she took rooms in Rue Saint-Vincent

facing the cernetery 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

19

sheen flushing into pink, a délicate translucency, that holds mespellbound 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, foliowing Vermeer and

long before Utrillo, ranks among the most sensitive painters

of stone walls.

LOUIS DAGUERRE. GENERAL VIEW OF PARIS FROM MONTMARTRE, CA. 183O.

20

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

lie between those of Michel and Vollon's Moulin de la Galette

(Musée Carnavalet, Paris), which was painted when he wastwenty-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

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 mootpoint 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

Saint-Hilaire, Pissarro painted his Street in Montmartre in whichthe interlocking planes formed by walls, houses and the road

reveal him as a precursor of Cézanne. Evidently attracted bythis motif, the latter painted, about 1867, his Rue des Saules, once

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 Rued'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, many-storied bouses strike a contrast witb tbe green luxuriance of tbe

little orcbards.

Already tbe Sacred Hill was beginning to bave for painters

tbat curious fascination wbicb was to last for well over balf a

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 upfriendsbips 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 revolution-

aries, tben styled "Independents," to set on foot a movementwbose importance was recognized only many years later.

26

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUP

WHAT circumstances favor the birth of a new school of art,

and why should it originate in one place rather than

another? There is no question that topography and even

climatic conditions often play a leading part; but sometimes

ail that is needed is for some artist with a strong personality to

make a local café his forum, or for a group of young men to

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 newpeinture 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 wasdivided 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 the country. But the latter had little liking for the menhe met at the 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 nowthat thèse born fighters, undaunted by the abuse to which their

art and even their private lives were constantly subjected,

27

mustered their forces in the cause of the new painting. Amongstthem Manet, a man of gentle birth and a revolutionary despite

himself, played the part of ringleader.

A famous picture has immortalized the devoted camar-

aderie 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-

mentary 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

was later to employ so skillfully.

It may seem 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. Apity he did not—for, as things turned out, admirable flower

painter though he was. Pantin soon lost his bearings in the

hazy symbolism of the Wagnerian cuit into which EdmondMaître (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 Mont-pellier, 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

**When the present-day 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 aroundhim." The painter, brush in hand, is Manet, and the model sitting in

front of him is Zacharie Astruc, a critic who staunchly defended the newschool 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.

THÉODORE FANTIN-LATOUR. THE STUDIO AT LES BATIGNOLLES, 187O.

29

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

30

A tdfï" with the owner of the house was enough to décide

Bazille to make another move. But before settling into his newquarters (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 manyhappy evenings with his friends Renoir, Edmond Maître,

Claude Monet, Manet and Zola. He grouped them ail on his

FREDERIC BAZILLE. THE STUDIO, DETAIL: EDMOND MAITRE PLAYINGTHE PIANO, 1870.

31

canvas. "My own likeness was donc by Manet himself," he

proudly informed his parents in a letter. Thus we know that

Manet was responsible for the figure of Bazille, who is shownstanding, holding his palette and brushes, beside the painting onan 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-

graph. It also makes us realize Bazille's gift for pictorial cons-

truction and what 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 whomwere much distressed by the death of their generous, warm-hearted 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

"the steady stream of people in the Avenue de Clichy, the

boisterous drinking-parties across the way in Wepler's, Boivin's

and Père Lathuile's taverns and, on the way back, the brawling

crowd of laundresses, plumbers and cobblers in Dutrou's

bar." ^2 As a resuit, some of the group began to patronize the

Nouvelle-Athènes in Place Pigalle. One of the attractions of

this café was its ceiling décoration, the work of Petit, a Mont-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

royalist, he harangued ail 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 character-

istic of addicts of the highly potent absinthe of eighty years

ago. Next year Degas painted his pastel, 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 wasliving 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 youngballet girl in wax—and that mouth, just hinted at, how beauti-

fully it's done!" Degas, who was a friend of Mallarmé at the

time and an occasional versifier, composed a sonnet in her

honor which includes thèse lines:

Si Montmartre a donné Vesprit et les aïeux

Roxelane le neî^ et la Chine les jeux,

Attentif Ariel donne à cette recrue

Tes pas légers de jour, tes pas légers de nuit.

If Montmartre supplied "the spirit and the lineage" of this

little 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, plumpedhimself 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,

34

practically never came and Cézanne, too, was an infrequent

visiter. 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 upon the spur of the moment. George Moore who, after giving

up the idea of being a painter, had broken with Cabanel, was

EDOUARD MANET. PORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOORE, CA. 1879.

35

»»i

a habitué of this famous café whose atmosphère he has so

well evoked in liis writings and in which the young school of

artists found its earliest defenders.

About this time 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

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 onthe 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. Oneday, when visiting Renoir's studio, Lamy noticed the sketch

and promptly urged his friend to expand it into a full-size

36

painting. The fîrst thing, Renoir decided, was to rent a roomsomewhere 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-

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 back-

yards, without finding anything of the kind he wanted.

"Then, as chance would hâve it, we turned into Rue Cortot,

in those days a 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

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 ofwhich 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,

there 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, movingin next morning.

"That was, for both of us, the beginning of many happydays, divided between the cottage and the Moulin whereRenoir 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 fromour hands and shoot up like a kite above the Butte." ^^

Renoir's Montmartre was still in a state of pristine inno-

cence, 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 Mont-martre 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 whoremained 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 modempainting had as its point of dcparture a quite ordinary scène,

the 'P2insi2in jemesse at play in the grounds of the Moulin de la

Galette. And thus, as so often in Venice, so in Montmartrethere 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

tawdry surroundings of the Butte.

When working on this huge canvas, Renoir used to hâve

his 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 country-

side inhabited by painters and rentiers, where you could work in

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

houses. The Impasse Girardon looks for ail the world like a

mountain pass. 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 Sacré-

Cœur was soon to rise. Moreover, a number of cabarets nowwere 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.

44

"Fm feeling positively lost," wrote Renoir to a friend

during his trip to Italy in 1881, "at being eut off from Mont-martre." In his opinion the humble s t ^r/>//^ was quite as attrac-

tive as any of the sparkling belles of Naples. By now Mont-martre was by way of becoming the Mecca of Parisians onpleasure bent, and its little streets were thronged with cabs andcarriages 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 in 1886, tired of studying at the Academy ofAntwerpunder teachers who did ail they could to curb his inde-

pendent 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 himthere. 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 himmoney 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 whenThéo was at work in the picture-shop, he received a note

scribbled in black chalk announcing that Vincent was waiting

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 Piestres, better known as Cormon,who had opened a studio at 104 Avenue de Clichy and arranged

it to his liking "with stacks of weapons, embroidery and rich

fabrics cluttering up the corners." On the walls hung copies

of Old Master pictures. From Emile Bernard, one of his fellow

students at Cormon's, we learn that "Van Gogh's bearishness

and self-absorption intrigued us ail. He worked incessantly:

in the morning with the other students, painting from the

model; in the afternoon, when only Toulouse-Lautrec, Anque-

tin 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

46

(a sort 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.^^

VINCENT VAN GOGH. THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, 1 886-1 888.

47

TT

At Paris Vincent was initiated into Impressionism. Hepainted still lifes of flowers, the view from his studio windowand, 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

CAMILLE PISSARRO. THE OUTER BOULEVARDS, 1879.

48

making vast progress as an artist. Also, he's much more cheer-

ful and 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

VINCENT VAN GOGH. BOULEVARD DE CLICHY, 1 886-1 888.

49

sparks" in ail his contacts. A rallying-point of the Impres-

sionists, Theo'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 wasuphill work getting them approved of by the public and critics.

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 atten-

dances at the gallery and, strong as was his sensé of the family

tie, Théo began to hope that his "impossible brother" wouldmake a move. "There are two men in him," he wrote to his

younger sister. "One is marvelously gifted, gentle and sensitive;

the other, selfish and cruel. And the pity is that he's his ownenemy; 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

to his sister-in-law) he made triptychs of the island of La Grande

Jatte, showing the little taverns on the Seine bank, the boats

on the river, and the gardens haunted by loving couples onSunday afternoons. One wonders if on thèse expéditions he

met Seurat who about this time was making sketches for his

big canvas A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande fatte,

We hâve no évidence that any such encounter took place, but

Van Gogh certainly came in contact with Emile Bernard, wholived 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 RueClauzel, was alone in showing interest in Van Gogh' s painting.

50

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,a cabaret run by Corot's former model "La Segatori" andpatronized by Anquetin, Bernard and Lautrec.

In the winter of 1 887-1 888 he made many portraits, includ-

ing one of Père Tanguy and several of himself, most striking

of which is the one showing him standing at his easel (according

to Theo's wife, this 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 Impres-

sionists, 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 Goghwas downright to the point of rudeness and flared up whenanyone 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 drink-

ing 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 discours-

ing 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

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 dejoie 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

\m^^. -/.'X_%

•"-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

his art. And now it was with leaves of grass, wheat fîelds, olive

trees 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

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 render-

ings 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, moreadventurous than in the past. The amount of work he turned

out in those two years of arduous effort is amazing : nearly twohundred pictures (according to La Faille' s catalogue). Amongstthem are the Café du Point de Vue, that homage to the three

colors, blue, white and red, of the 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 musthâve 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.

55

56

LAUTREC'S PERAMBULATIONS

WHAT could those two fellow students in Cormon's studio,

seemingly so totally unlike, Lautrec and 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 wonder-

fully 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

that his deformity attracted little or no attention on the boule-

vards and in the Montmartre cabarets. Appearances notwith-

standing, the scion of the ancient house of the Counts of

Toulouse and the son of the poor Nuenen pastor discovered

they had 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 RueVictor-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 wasequipped with Louis XIII chairs, but his speciality was the use

of the latest Parisian argot sprinkled with touches of grandil-

oquence and braggadocio. "God created the world," he was fond

of saying, "Napoléon instituted the Légion of Honor ; as for me,

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 youngchansonnier from Courtenay, Aristide Bruant, who had made his

début at the Chat Noir with his song A la Villette, Some years

later Bruant, who had become estranged from Salis, opened a

cabaret of his own. Le Mirliton ^o, in the premises vacated bySalis, who had moved 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

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 tra-

gédies 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

of his name ("Treclau") the cover of Bruant's A Saint-La:(are,

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

theater—where he was performing—to display Lautrec's poster,

which had been turned down by them originally.

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

58

Mo. 32

L

59

33

JHENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. ARISTIDE BRUANT, 1893. POSTER.

60

To this period belongs Courteline's description of Bruant,

hardly less colorful than Lautrec's poster. "One dog, two dogs,

three dogs, top boots. 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 handsomeface, the face of an obdurate but affable Chouan. Passers-by

stop to stare and wonder 'Who the devil is that fellow?' Theanswer's simple: he is Montmartre, Montmartre incarnate tak-

ing 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

his subjects jockeys, music-hall singers bathed in the glare of

footlights, women at their toilet. He frequented nightclubs and

fancy-dress balls where his physical shortcomings passed unno-

ticed. He was so often to be seen sketching at the Moulin de la

Galette that Francis Jourdain called it the "Moulin de Lautrec,"

in contradistinction to its successor, the Moulin Rouge, "whoseatmosphère of tawdry luxury was much like that of a bordello." ^^

However Lautrec was also a habitué of the latter, which waslocated 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 disap-

pearing 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, wasone 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 pro-

cession 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, wherethe floorshow came up to the highest expectations.

61

62

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

I THE MOULIN ROUGE, DETAIL! VALENTIN LE DESOSSE, 189O.

63

A certain Jacques Renaudin who kept a bar in Rue Coquil-

lière 2^, danced 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

Rayon d'Or.

When to the strains of a tune by OfFenbach, Lautrec madehis entry with a group of friends, attended by an escort of

painters and lusty pugilists who cleared the way for him andshielded 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 enormoushead, 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 knownfor 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 upinto 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

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 manage-

ment to make a new poster replacing Chéret's, the Moulin Rougewas an unfailing source of inspiration to Lautrec, whose output

of paintings, drawings and lithographs on this thème wasnothing 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,

their 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 cos-

mopolitan élite of Paris who nightly thronged the Moulin Rouge.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 makesthem live before us. But as a painter, too, he claims our admir-

ation for the vigor of his brushwork, the originality of his color

schemes, and his dextrous use of flat tints in the Japanese man-ner. 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 MoulinRouge were painted on cardboard supports and since the color

was partially absorbed by the cardboard, the painting has a

curious fluidity, giving the effect of movement at its most vol-

atile. 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 workshâve 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. Herélégant 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") whosubsequently 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.^^

66

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

67

LAUTREC. THE CLOWN BOUM-BOUM AT THE CIRQUE FERNANDO, 1893,

68

Balls, masquerades and café-concerts—Lautrec thoroughly

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. Hercostumes, 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 appear-

ance 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 tight-

fitting dress, she eut a striking figure. Lautrec's sketches bear

out the description of her given by René Maizeroy, one of her

earliest admirers.^^ "A pale, strange, unforgettable face, the

mocking eyes of a Paris street-urchin, a long tapering neck.

A mop of yellow hair built up like a clown's wig." She was the

first, Xanrof tells us, to wear black gloves; until now café-

concert singers had always worn white ones. Such was the youngwoman 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 wasdesigned by Lautrec. He made numerous drawings and litho-

graphs of this witty artist, in various attitudes and from every

angle, so brutally candid that, used though she was to being

caricatured, Yvette Guilbert was sometimes frankly outraged.

"You little monster! YouVe made me look a horror!" she wrote

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 RuePigalle. When, on the doctor's marriage, he had to quit, he

shared rooms with Rachou, a painter from Toulouse, at 22 RueGanneron. 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 syco-

more 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"—

a

bovinization of "cavalcade"—organized that year^s by Mont-martre 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 Charpen-

tier, 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

BONNARDAND THE REVUE BLANCHE ARTISTS

WHiLE Lautrec's Aristide Bruant in his Cabaret was being

printed off at the Imprimerie Ancourt, an announcement

of the poster was published in the magazine UEscarmouche

(December 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 asso-

ciated 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

a studio in Rue Le Chapelais (in the Batignolles district), movedto Rue de Douai. Later, in 191 3, he rented a studio in Rue Tour-

laque, and round about 1925 he took rooms in Boulevard des

Batignolles. It was there, on the third floor of No. 48, at the

very spot where I am writing thèse Unes (but before the house

had been rebuilt), that I met Bonnard for the first time. There

was an agreeable, musliny cosiness in the atmosphère of the

room, and the doors were set in tall embrasures made, one wouldsay, to frame some graceful female nude. Bonnard showed mehis 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 hadfor 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

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 himat his work, yet 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 pain-

ters, 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 Mont-martre. 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 black-

and-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, dress-

makers' 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

not been able to trace it) was a Moulin Rouge showing EdwardVIIand, I believe. Grand Duke Nicholas watching the can-can

dancers. In Steinlen's 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. Hedepicts human beings as they essentially are, irrespective of their

means or social status. The raw materials of his personages are,

76

one might say, the asphalt of the sidewalks, the stone of paving-

blocks and even the iron of the bridge whose grated platform

overhangs the tombstones of Montmartre cemetery. Thoughthèse 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 pretentious-

ness of any kind. For a long while I took him for a religious-

minded man, and in the last analysis perhaps he was one; so

évident was his gratitude to Providence for having granted himthe 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 RuePigalle; 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

Jatte. 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 Brouil-

lards, 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 Moulinde 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 ^^

(a Belgian, who had studied under Gustave Moreau and died

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

milieu, 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

n

grisette, "the little milliner who looked like a singing nymphand wore her flowered hat at a rakish angle," ^^ was much like

the Montmartre of that romantic opéra Louise, a hymn to whatwas then known as "free love." You still saw people makinghay in Square Saint-Pierre, "where in the evenings there for-

gathered ail the 'glamour girls' and their 'protectors', and a humof 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. Thensomeone 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

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 menwere seeking to create vibrations and résonances of a subtler

nature than the fluttering effusions of Impressionism whoseswan-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 youngartists wanted was a more sustained, cohérent résonance, like

that of a held chord in music. 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,

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

78

of "éloquence," the very essence of sensation. And in Mont-martre 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

interiors, glimpses 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 mor-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 AdolpheMax) 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

other artists 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 out-

distanced them since those early days. He forgot that Vuillard'

s

art had come to a dead end in 1905, when, compromising with

the taste of the day, he became a fashionable portrait-painter;

he forgot how 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

80

PIERRE BONNARD. BOULEVARD DES BATIGNOLLES, I907.

This canvas passed directly from Bonnard's hands into the possession ofthe Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. The scène is one on which Bonnard must hâveoften gazed from his window at No. 48 : a little flower-girl hurrying homeafter selling out her stock, schoolboys scampering across the boulevard,and in the background the Sacré-Cœur. The taxi had not yet supplantedthe fiacre and there was still that atmosphère of **Les BatignoUes'* oflong ago which so enchanted Bonnard. On the right is the open spacedotted 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-

jurée! up so well in his memories of his young days. "At the end

of a dark street—was it Rue Blanche?—you saw the Moulin

Rouge looming hugely, the vast wings slowly turning. And youfelt yourself caught up in that mechanical gyration, which set

the rhythm of the nightworld peopled by Lautrec's floor-dancers

EDOUARD VUILLARD. PLACE CLICHY, CA. I9IO.

82

PIERRE BONNARD. PLACE CLICHY, I912.

and the street-walkers of the now half-empty boulevards—the

outer boulevards, as they were called by Parisians." Thewomen moving in ail directions, the bistros, the butter-eggs-

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

drivers with their hordes of children squatting on piles of rags

and scrap-iron—ail thèse familiar scènes of the Montmartre

streets Bonnard painted with a vivacity of Une, an exactitude

83

PIERRE BONNARD. RUE THOLOZE, MONTMARTRE, I9I7.

84

in the rendering of facial expressions, a lifelike and forcible

directness that to my mind are incomparable. The music-hall and

cabaret 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 twowaiters 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 picture whose textural richness is a feast for the eyes.

And hardly less remarkable is 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 noillusions about his limitations. One day when I was congratulat-

ing 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 ima-

gine," he said to me, "that I underrate them. On the contrary,

I sometimes suspect that there's a touch of 'sloppiness' in mypainting. Still, I couldn't help being what I was, and that

dovetailed pictorial architecture of theirs, however fine, wasdefinitely not for me."

THE BATEAU-LAVOIRAND IMPASSE DE GUELMA

IN September 1900 a nineteen-year-old young man fromMalaga, 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 byNonell, 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 Mont-martre 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

month in return for his entire output.

Picasso had already shown such facility and so remarkable

a gift of assimilation that his friends at Paris called him "the

little Goya." Miguel Utrillo, the art critic (Maurice Utrillo's

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

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

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 second visit to Paris in 1901 Picasso workedin a style ranging from the vague Impressionism, with small

87

PABLO PICASSO. BAL TABARIN, I9OI.

comma-like brushstrokes, common in those days to such very

différent painters as Pissarro, Luce, Marquet and Dufy, to the

more developed and assured style of his Bal Tabarin, with

the close-up of the woman standing on the left against the

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

exhibition, which opened on June 24, 1901, he showed seventy-

^Yt pictures. There he met Max Jacob and the two young menbecame 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 enter-

ing was the big picture of The Burial of Casagemas which stood

at a little distance from the back wall, like a screen put there

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. Nexthe 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 poemsto 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,

for this cabaret was by now a back number. Sometimes whenPicasso had managed to get tickets we dropped in at the MoulinRouge to see the quadrille; then moved on to the Zut in Place

Ravignan." ^^ The owner of the cabaret rejoicing in this oddname was Frédéric Gérard (known to intimâtes as Frédé). After

placing some glasses of béer on a barrel under a lamp, whose

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 andovercrowding 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 meif you 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 somefemale 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 Ravi-

gnan (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. "Picasso's *den' was on the lowest floor

some way down a passage, on the left. On very hot days he

left his door wide open and people who passed by could see

him painting away, practically naked." ^^

One of the tenants, Fernande Olivier, a buxom, warm-hearted young woman, met him coming in one stormy night.

He had a drenched kitten in his arms and laughingly suggested

she should accept it as a présent. "You couldn't place himsocially," she said many years later. "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 always one was conscious of the 'sacred fire' that burnt

within, and he had a sort of magnetic power that I simply

couldn't resist." 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

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

beside it. 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 mousewhich Picasso looked after with loving care and showed to ail

his visitors." *^ On red-letter days hashish was eaten or opiumsmoked. "Sitting on mats, the little group of friends passed

heavenly hours." ^

Soon after Picasso settled in the Bateau-Lavoir, "a blue-

blooded 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 MaxJacob 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 mewith 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. TheStreet 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 wasfrom 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 forma single, grandly monumental figure.

Manolo was the only constant fréquenter of Picasso's shed-

like studio. "The ceiling was supported by tremendously thick

beams, much 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 cobwebbedrafters. One was *The Burial of Sarah Bernhardt' (then very

much alive), another *The Prompter and the Prima Donna'

—

93

JUAN GRIS. STILL LIFE AXD LANDSCAPE (PLACE RAVIGNAX), I915.

94

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

95

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

heartily. 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 belowfrom 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.

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, abovewhich 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

woman there were two or three. Then came Les Demoiselles

d^Avignon ^^, a picture eight feet high."

Cubism as we know it today was the resuit of many ten-

tative experiments and sudden inspirations. It is difficult to say

who was the first to open painters' eyes to the "new dimension,"

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). Theyusually 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 byMarcoussis.

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. Manyof 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 owncomposition, 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 RueRavignan were over; Picasso moved out in October 1910.

"Those boys must hâve won the big prize at the lottery," oneof the removers said to Maurice Raynal who supervised opéra-

tions, and there certainly was a world of différence between

Picasso's "cubby-hole" in the Bateau-Lavoir and his big newstudio, with an apartment facing south adjoining it, at 1 1 Boule-

vard 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 Cubismtook définitive form. Hère he made a séries of portraits, amongstothers 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 move-ment 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, Paris and in particular Montmartre had a large part

in its origin, since it was in Paris and Montmartre that the

artist who, along with Boccioni ^^ was to be its leading figure

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

jn Montparnasse, he very soon joined up with the Montmartregroup, which was steadily expanding and becoming more andmore international. Steinlen was Swiss, Picasso and Gris wereSpanish, while Van Dongen, one of the artist colony in the

Bateau-Lavoir, had corne from Holland. (At this time VanDongen, who always worked in blue dungarees, eked out a

GINO SEVERINI. NORD-SUD, I912.

•JiRCCf

lOI

scanty living by selling sketches made at the Moulin de la

Galette and the Moulin Rouge to weekly magazines.) Like

Apollinaire, Marcoussis hailed from Poland. Moreover, therewas

now a steady influx of young artists from abroad coming to try

their luck at the foot of that famous basilica painted turn byturn by Picasso *^, Braque and Marcoussis : the Sacré-Coeur.

GINO SEVERINI. DANSEUSES A MONICO, I913.

102

Severini began by taking an attic room at 36 Rue Ballu,

where his neighbors were mostly young dressmakers and the

cooks of the well-to-do bourgeois living on lower floors.

Thèse amiable young persons saw to it that he was well fed. Hespent much of his time exploring the slopes of the Butte. "Oneday," he told me, "when I was walking up Rue Lepic on myway to the Sacré-Coeur, I collided with a dark young man of

about my own âge, just in front of the Moulin de la Galette.

The type of hat he was wearing struck me as familiar. 'You're

Italian, aren't you?' I asked. 'Sure, and so are you, unless Tmmuch 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, sur-

rounded 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 worecorduroy 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. Avotary of "modem ideas," he had the courage of his convic-

tions. One evening in the Spielmann restaurant on Place duTertre 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.

"I work out at least three pictures a day—in my head," he

explained. "What' s the good of spoiling clean canvas when

103

nobody will buy my work?" ^^ After meeting each other as

described above, in Rue Lepic, the 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 weanhimself 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

"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 paint-

ers, who were coming more and more into favor? Personally

I think that the chief attraction for thèse foreign artists was a

certain lightness of touch, a clarity 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 whomgravitated 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.

104

Dorgelès, too, was an occasional visitor. "Those of us whowere 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 renamedin 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 cartoonistAndré Gill, who origi-

nally 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 Mont-martre ^^ tells us that Modigliani often used to go to visit

Béatrice Hastings at her home in the nearby Rue Norvins. In

several of his portraits we see her oddly angular and irregular

features. Max Jacob sometimes slept there "out of Christian

charity" since Béatrice was mortally afraid of burglars andhardly 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 14to 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 roomin 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 voguehe carved a number of stone heads, showing the influence of

Brancusi, the Rumanian sculptor whose acquaintance he hadmade in the Cité Falguière. He also made designs for caryatids.

105

many of which are now in a private collection. ^^ But he found

the handling of the chisel took too much out of him and soon

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 hungabove the zinc bar-counter, pictures of the walls and houses of

Montmartre. They were by Maurice Utrillo who was Seve-

rini'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 wasRaoul 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 occu-

pied 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 goodCompany. 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 Bateau-

Lavoir, 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 onone 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), Dufymade 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, CA. I9II.

108

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 nowwas 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 bythe 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 alcohol-

ism, 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 painting à la Monticelli

in thick slabs of pigment. When, however, the family movedfrom the Butte Pinson to Rue Cortot he took to working in

Pissarro's early 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.

109

MAURICE UTRILLO. TERRACE IN RUE MULLER I912.

But even more typical was her son Maurice Utrillo, whowas 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 becamelike 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 whoimpressed 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 you than that!" ^^

Instinctively Utrillo used the most réceptive of ail colors,

the one upon which everything 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 exprèssed

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 S GARDEN, I909-I9IO.

in a corner of which we see the premises of Anzoli, picture-

frame maker, fîrst to exhibit an Utrillo in his window. WhenUtrillo offered a barman a picture in exchange for a drink, the

man waved it away. "No damn' use to me!" Everybody felt

like that 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

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

canvases. And one fine day Octave Mirbeau walked out of

Libaude's with an Utrillo under his arm.^^

MAURICE UTRILLO. PLACE RAVIGNAN, I9II-I915,

L<>tt5;«« UL'«^o

114

MAURICE UTRILLO. RUE D ORCHAMPT, I912.

How often was Utrillo—that "graceless child of somberSaturn" as he called himself—given a rough handling by the

local police! Time and again César Gay, who owned a snack-

bar. Le Casse-Croûte (he often described himself as "Monsieur

Maurice's pupil"), rescued him from custody and locked himup in a bedroom so as to prevent his drinking. But somehowUtrillo managed to slip out, and wound up with one of his

115

periodic stays in an inebriates' home. "Life hère is no joke,

I can assure you," he wrote to Gay from the Villejuif Asylumin September 191 6. "One can only grin and bear it and try

not to let the depressing atmosphère get one down . . . Whatwonderful 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

whitewashed walls!"

On April 11, 1920, a mock-solemn proclamation of the

"Free Commune" of Montmartre was made, a parochial décla-

ration of independence. The "Free Commune" had its owntown hall on the Place 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 Sacré-

Cœur, 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 programwhich 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

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

scraper" partisans. In their black list—of members of the "pro-

skyscraper" clan—fîgured the Cubists and Dadaists. In short,

the 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

on the Steinlen tradition, this Old Brigade of Montmartre,

devotees of the Chat Noir and ail that it had stood for, must

116

hâve watched with jaundiced eyes the rise of Montparnasse,the new art center now developing in the heart of the greatcity they looked down on from their hilltop. But the picturesnow being produced in Montmartre were little more thanamusing trifles and had nothing in common with the art ofPicasso, Gris, Braque, Modigliani and Severini, or with that

MAURICE UTRILLO. THE LAPIN AGILE, I913.

117

MAURICE UTRILLO. PLACE DU TERTRE, I92O.

of Max Jacob. In any case thèse men had begun to désert the

cafés 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,"

"Matisse will drive us ail crazy.") Some practical jokers had the

118

bright idea of tying a paintbrush to the tail of Frédé's donkey,

lod "helping" it to paint a picture, 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 onpainting his beloved Montmartre, the only change being that

he now included droves of 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 madequite 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 RueJunot, 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

Cortot, Paris i8e. Beipare of Imitations.

Many years later, after his mother' s death and his marriage,

Utrillo, who had become one of the most popular French

painters of the day, moved to Le Vésinet. He died while this

book was being written, in November 1955, at Dax (Landes).

On the easel in his hôtel bedroom was an unfînished canvas onwhich he then was working : yet another Rue Cortot. Thus it wasstill a vision of Montmartre that held his dying eyes ! . . .

119

120

"M..onfmartre is finishedH That remark is surely as old as the

hills—as the Sacred Hill itself. You heard it made in the dajs of the

Chat Noir and I hâve Utile douht that people often voiced the same

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.^^ Ail that is left of Rodolphe Salis^ cabaret is enshrined

in Bruanfs songs, After heing revived at the Bal Tabarin the ^^French

Cancan*^ has returned in a Moulin Rouge that Lautrec certainly would

fail to recogni^e. The Bostock Hippodrome is noip the Gaumont

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

doTvn fences surrounding Renoir^s Moulin de la Galette, which still

rises forlornly above its mouldering floor, worn bj the feet of dancers

jphose dancing dajs are long since done. Like the Bateau-Lavoir,

'^'worm-eaten hulk of an old ship stranded high and drj,^^ ^^ it has

outlived its day. The Café Wepler, jvhence Bonnard painted so many a

Place Clichy, is '^'renovated'' almost everjjear and the Lapin Agile

has become a show-place for tourists doing '-''Paris by Night.^^ Since

Dufys death the house at j Impasse de Guelma is no longer tenanted

by any painter ; a picture-framer works in the studio which once was

Suî^anne Valadon"s. Utrillo, too, hadforsaken 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 thej take us today, those long flights of steps leading up

to the Sacré-Cœur ivhich Vivin ^^ has depicted in his daintj, linear

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. Therewas a time when he went to exhibit his **daubs" on the shelf of a smallshop-window in the Sacré-Cœur marketplace. His works hâve the utmostdeHcacy, the quality of finely built masonry, and are painted stone bystone, brick by brick, with élégant précision. The living line weaves spider-

wise across the canvas. Usually **popular" art tends to be répétitive, butthe pictures of this ex-postman, who with his searching eyes and shaggybeard 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 ofpiIgrimage

for globe-trotters, mth a church at the highest point of Paris^ only one

sjmbol amongst others? Perhapsfor the moment Montmartre"s prestige

is in éclipse. Yet heside the new basilica. Saint Peter^s, its ancientparish

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 chapel dedicated to St Rita, patron saint of hopeless cases.

YeSy Montmartre, the old Montmartre, is far from dead, and the

nightlife which lures so many foreign tourists to the Hill is 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 favored hour to see how the last surviving vine is faring,

to feast my eyes on the farm that has outlived the changefulyears, to

visit Lacourière the master-engraver in his eyrie not far from the

Sacré-Coeur, or to revive my memories of the early Utrillos in the

streets and taverns he loved so ivell. As I walk, old songs are bu^j(ing

in my head, visions ofpink or white carnations rise before my eyes. Atthe corner of Rue 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 to

explore this ^^brave nen> ivorld^^ and gradually to supplant my memories

mth his. No, the last page is not turned, a new eventful chapter is

beginning; Montmartre mil always be Montmartre.

NOTES AND REFERENCES•

BIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX OF NAMES

LIST OF COLORPLATESTABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTES AND REFERENCES

^ On the i5th of August 1534. This was the fîrst step towards thcfounding of the Society of Jésus. The six companions were Francis Xavier,Diego Laynez, Alfonso Salmeron, Simon Rodriguez, Nicolas Bobadillaand the Savoyard priest Pierre Lefevre who celebrated the Mass. The keysof the chapel were made over to Inigo Lopez de Recalde, better knownas St Ignatius of Loyola, by the Révérend Mother Perrette Roudlars,the assistant sacristan.

2 The Treaty of Montmartre (February 6, 1662) was subsequentlyannulled and replaced by another treaty.

^ This incident, which took place on March 30, 1814, was painted byVernet in 1820. The picture shows Marshal Moncey on horseback givingorders 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 readingAu 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 Montmartreand Clignancourt

; Jules Claye, a publisher of art books, had them boundtogether about 1874 in an album entitled Vues de Paris et de ses environs

par Georges Michel. Thèse two albums were bought by the Louvre fromM. Adolphe Court in April 1892 for 500 francs. The rapid, sketchy exécu-

tion 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 wefind in Michel's oil-paintings.

^ Prosper Dorbec, Uart du paysage en France^ de la fin du XVIII* siècle

à la fin du Second Empirey Paris 1925.

• Le Constitutionnely Paris, November 25, 1846.

' Paul Yaki, Montmartre, terre des artistes, Girard, Paris 1947.

® Gérard de Nerval, La Bohème galante.

* On January 25, 1855, in Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne.

124

^® We regret the impossibility of publishing a reproduction of The LastWindmills 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 ofCorot'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. Gèneva 1952.

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

1* Edmond de Concourt, in Clément-Janin, op. cit,

" Georges Rivière, Renoir et ses amis, Paris 1921.

" Georges Rivière, op. cit.

^' "IVe taken a little room in Montmartre, a neighborhood you wouldlike," wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Théo in a letter dated

July 6, 1875. "It's small but it overlooks a little garden whose walls

are covered with ivy and creepers." Letters to Théo, Amsterdam 1924.

^* Emile Bernard, Relations avec Toulouse-Lautrec, Art-Documents,No. 18, Geneva 1952.

1^ Thèse détails are taken from the introduction by Mrs Van Gogh-Bonger, sometime Theo's wife, to the Letters from Vincent van Goghto his Brother Théo (in Dutch), Amsterdam 1924.

^^ It was for the walls of Le Mirliton that Lautrec painted his famousQuadrille de la chaise Louis XIII à rElysée-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 A 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 werenot overstepped in the course of the evening.

*^ 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 Goulueand 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 de Toulouse-luiutrec^ Paris 1926.

2^ Maurice Joyant, op. cit.

2'* 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 manylithographs of the set published in 1899. It was also a favorite haunt ofSeurat, but his large canvas The Circus was still unfinished at his death

2^ In the Gil Blas Illustré of July 12, 1891.

"^^ On June 20, 1897.

2^ "O Muse of Montmartre, dainty-fingered working-girl!" ThusEmile Goudeau invoked the "Muse de la Vachalcade," MademoiselleMarguerite Stumpp.

^° Gustave Coquiot, Seurat, Paris 1924.

^^ Born of Belgian parents on October 3, 1872, at Nice, Henri Evenepoelstudied art at Brussels before moving to Paris. The letters he wrote whenhe 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 Lautrecand was intimate with Steinlen and Forain. Among his fellow students

at Gustave Moreau's studio were Rouault, Marquet and Matisse. The last-

named 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 séries, whosecover illustration was a lithograph by Bonnard.

126

^^ In 1896, in conjunction with Franc-Nohain, Claude Terrasse andAlfred 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, Picassoyportraits et souvenirs^ Paris 1946.

^^ Maurice Raynal, Le Banquet Rousseau^ in Les Soirées de Paris^ January

15, 1914.

*® 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 littérairesy

1932.

*3 Gabriel Reuillard, Le cinquantenaire du Bateau-Lavoir, in Le Monde

,

Paris, January 21, 1952.

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

Apollinaire's Alcools.

*^ José Gonzalès, alias Juan Gris. It was not until 191 1 that he joined

the Cubist movement.

*® Boccioni made his start as a painter before turning to sculpture. Thefirst 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 byM. 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 pays, Paris 1928.

^" Paul Yaki, Montmartre, 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 lookingat "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 BluePeriod, to The Violoncellist (19 10) in which Modigliani for the fîrst timeshowed 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 worksof 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 ofModigliani's style.

^2 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 hecontinually got into scrapes with one or another of the toughs who enjoyedthe proprietor*s favors. The picture shows the artist about to be led awayto the police-station in Rue Lambert where he was an old acquaintanceof 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.

"Francis Jourdain, Utrillo, Paris 1953.

" Francis Carco, Montmartre vécu par Utrillo, Paris 1947.

^^ Besides several views of the Sacré-Cœur, done in what Jakovskycalls *'his cobwebbly, fîlamentous style," Vivin painted many other scènes

of Montmartre: Rue de VAbreuvoir, Rue Saint-Rustique, St Peter''s Church,

The Moulin de la Galette, The Moulin Rouge and The Place du Tertre in Winter.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jean Renault & Henri Château, Montmartre^ Flammarion, Paris

1897. — Georges Montorgueil, La vie à Montmartre^ Boudet, Paris 1899.— Lanoë & Brice, Histoire de VEcole française du paysage de Poussin à Millety

Chasles, Paris 1901. — Erich Klossowski, Die Maler von Montmartre(Willette, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Léandre), J. Bard, Berlin 1903. —Charles Sellier, Curiosités historiques et pittoresques du vieux Montmartre^Champion, Paris 1904. — Montmartre et ses artistes^ in UArt et le Beau^

Paris 1907. — Bertrand Millanvoye, Anthologie des poètes de Montmartre

^

Ollendorff, Paris 1909. — F.-R. Hervé-Piraux, Histoire des petites maisons

galantes. Les temples de Vamour au XVIH" siècle ^ Clichy, Montmartre^ etc.^

Daragon, Paris 1910. — Lucien Lazard, Promenades à Montmartre^ in

Le Vieux PariSy souvenirs et vieilles demeures^ published under the direction

of G. Lenotre, Eggiman, Paris 191 2. — R. P. Jonquet & FrançoisVeuillot, Montmartre autrefois et aujourd'hui^ Paris 191 9. — AntoinePARMÉNIE, Autour de nos moulins (Promenades à travers le vieux Montmartre)

^

Delattre, Paris 1922. — Jean-Emile Bayard, Montmartre hier et aujourd'hui^

avec les souvenirs de ses artistes et écrivains les plus célèbres^ Jouve, Paris 1925. —

André Warnod, Les berceaux de la jeune peinture. Montmartre et Mont-parnasse^ Albin Michel, Paris 1925. — Prosper Dorbec, Uart du paysage

en France de la fin du XVIH' siècle à la fin du Second Empire^ Paris 1925. —Francis Cargo, De Montmartre auQuartier latin^ Albin Michel, Paris 1927.—Roland Dorgelès, Montmartre^ mon pays, Marcelle Lesage, Paris 1928. —André Warnod, Les peintres de Montmartre. Gavarni, Toulouse-Lautrec

,

Utrillo, Renaissance du Livre, Paris 1928. — Pierre Mag Orlan, Villes,

Rouen, Montmartre, etc., N.R.F., Paris 1929. — Paul Lesourd, La Butte

sacrée, Montmartre, des origines au XX^ siècle, Spes, Paris 1937. — PaulYaki, Montmartre, terre des artistes, notes and souvenirs, Girard, Paris

1947. — RoMi, Petite histoire des cafés-concerts parisiens. Ed. Jean Chitry,

10, rue de Rome, Paris 1950. — Francis Cargo, La belle époque au temps

de Bruant, Gallimard, Paris 1954. — Jacques Wilhelm, Les peintres dupaysage parisien.

Schools of Painting

E. Duranty, La Nouvelle Peinture, Paris 1876. — G. Moore, Confessions

of a Young Man, London 1888. — G. Geffroy, Histoire de l'Impressionnisme,

Paris 1894. — John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, Muséum ofModem Art, New York 1946. — Victor Crastre, Naissance du Cubisme,Céret 19 10. — Jean Leymarie, Impressionism ^ 2 vols., Skira, Geneva 1955.

129

Painters of Montmartre

Charles Clément, Géricault, Didier, Paris 1868. — P. A. Lemoisne,Degas^ Pion, Paris 1954. — Adolphe Tabarant, Manet, N.R.F., Paris 1947.— Ambroise Vollard, Renoir^ Paris 191 8. — Gustave Kahn, Fantin-

Latour, Rieder, Paris 1926. — Clément-Janin, La curieuse vie de Marcellin

DesboutinSy Paris 1922. — François Daulte, Frédéric Ba^^ille et son temps

^

Cailler, Geneva 1952. — Sir John Rothenstein, Life and Death of Conder^

London 1938. — Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris^ Gallimard,Paris 1946. — Maurice Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Floury, Paris

1926. — Francis Jourdain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Tisné, Paris 1952. — JacquesLassaigne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Skira, Geneva 1953. — Pierre Courthion,Bonnard, peintre du merveilleux, Marguerat, Lausanne 1945. — AlfredSensier, Georges Michel, Lemerre, Paris 1873. — Léo Larguier, Georges

Michel, Delpeuch, Paris 1927. — André Salmon, Modigliani, Paris 1926. —Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani, préface by Louis Latourette, Paris 1929. —Jacques Lipchitz, Modigliani, Flammarion, Paris 1954. — Gino Severini,Tutta la vita di un pittore, Garzanti, Milan 1956. — Jaime Sabartès, Picasso,

portraits et souvenirs, Paris 1946. — Alexandre Cirici-Pellicer, Picasso

avant Picasso, Cailler, Geneva 1950. — Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses

amis, Paris 1954. — Picasso, documents iconographiques, préface and notes

by Jaime Sabartès, Cailler, Geneva 1954. — Catalogue of the 1955 Picasso

Exhibition, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris. — Georges Rivière, Renoir

et ses amis, Floury, Paris 1921. — Adolphe Tabarant, Maurice Utrillo,

Bernheim, Paris 1926. — Francis Cargo, Montmartre vécu par Utrillo

(with 22 gouaches by Maurice Utrillo), Paris 1947. — Pierre Courthion,Maurice Utrillo, Marguerat, Lausanne 1948. — Francis Jourdain, Utrillo,

Braun, Paris 1953. — Vincent van Gogh, Brieven aan ^ijn Broeder, 3 vols.,

Amsterdam 1924.

INDEX OF NAMESAcadémie Suisse 27.

Adhémar Jean 126 (note 23).

Albi 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,

102, 127 (note 44); Alcools 127(note 44); Zone 127 (note 44).

Argenteuil 18.

Arles 5 5

.

Armande Madame 69.

Asnières 50.

Astruc Zacharie 29.

Avril Jane (La Mélinite) 66.

Barbizon School 14.

Barcelona 90.

Bateau-Lavoir 86, 90, 92, 99/101, 106,

120, 127 (notes 43, 44).Bazille Frédéric 27/32, 125 (note

12); The Family Réunion 28; TheStudio 30/32.

Belfort May 69.

Bellardel Napoléon-Joseph 26;

Rue d'Orchampty Montmartre 24.

Belleville 1 3

.

Bénédictines 7.

Berlin 24.

Berlioz Hector 18, 19, 112; Benve-

nuto Cellini 2sià. Requiem 18.

Bernard Emile 46, 50, 52, 57; Rela-

tions avec Toulouse-Lautrec, Art-Documents, No. 18 (Geneva 1952)125 (note 18).

Berne, Hermann Rupf Collection 99.Bernheim-Jeune Gallery 81.

Blanche Dr 18.

BoBADiLLA Nicolas 124 (note i).

BocciONi Umberto 100, 127 (note

46).

BoissY, Utrillo's father 109.

Bonaparte Joseph 9, 14.

BoNNARD Pierre 72/85, 107, 119,

120, 126 (note 35), 127 (note 36);The Boulevard 75; Boulevard des

Batignolles 8 1 ; Boulevard de Clichy

hy Night 79; The Cuirassier 73;Place Clichy 83; Rue Tholo:<:é,

Montmartre 84; Sketch of a Poster

for the AIouiin Rouge 72.

Bostock Hippodrome 120.

BoTTiNi Georges-Alfred 77.

BouHOT Etienne, St Peter's Church,

Montmartre 16, 17.

BouKAY Maurice, Stances à Manon 78.

Boum-Boum, Clown 66, 68.

Bourges Dr 70.

Brancusi Constantin 105.

Braque Georges 99, 100, 102, 104,

106, 117; Houses at UEstaque 99;The Sacré-Cœur 97.

Bruant Aristide 58, 60, 61, 73, 120,

125 (note 20).

Bruandet Lazare 12.

Brussels 126 (note 31).

Buffet Eugénie 58.

BuHOT Félix 32.

Cabanel Alexandre 35.

Cabarets : Les Ambassadeurs 5 8 ; LesAssassins 105; La Belle Gabrielle

128 (note 52); La Boule Noire 44;Le Chat Noir 44, 57, 58, 69, 78, 89,

116, 120; Le Divan Japonais 69;L'Elysée-Montmartre 44, 64, 125

(note 20); Le Lapin Agile 104/106,

117, 118, 120; Le Mirliton 58,125,(note 20); Le Moulin Rouge 58,

59, 61/66, 69, 70, 72, 77, 80, 82, 86,

88, 89, 102, 120, 126 (note 23),

127 (note 37), 128 (note 55); LaReine Blanche 44, 61; Le Tabarin

88, 89, 120; Le Tambourin 52.

131

Cafés and Restaurants: A l'AmiEmile 99; Bar Austin Fox 96;Restaurant of M™e Bataille 47;Café Boivin 32; Chez la MèreAdèle 104; Le Casse-Croûte 115;Auberge du Clou 78; Les Déca-dents 69 ; Le Franc-Buveur 5 5 ;

Café Guerbois 27, 28, 32, 120;

Le Hanneton 69; Brasserie Muller

27; La Nouvelle-Athènes 32, 34,

35, 120; Les Oiseaux 109; ChezOlivier 44; Chez le Père Lathuile

32, 41, 124 (note 3); Le Point deVue 51, 55; Spielmann Restaurant

103; Chez Wepler 32, 85, 120;Café "Le Zut*' 89, 90, 105.

Caillebotte Gustave 38.

Cargo Francis 104, 112; Montmartrevécu par Utrillo (Paris 1947) 128

(note 54).

Casagemas Caries 86, 89.

Casas Ramon 86.

Catalonia 86.

CÉZANNE Paul 25, 27, 36; Rue des

Saules, Montmartre 23, 25.

Chambord, Comte de 34.

Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine 8.

Charpentier Gustave 70.

Charpentier Madame Georges 36.

Chéret Jules, poster for the MoulinRouge 61, 65.

Chicago, Art Institute 66.

Chopin Frédéric 18.

C1GERI Eugène 24, 26.

Circus, Fernando 66, 68, 126 (note

26); Medrano 66, 77, 126 (note 26).

Claude Lorrain 119.

Claye Jules 124 (note 4).

Clément-Janin, La curieuse vie de

Marcellin Deshoutins (Paris 1922)

125 (notes 13, 14).

Clément Charles 15.

CoNDER Charles 64.

CoQuioT Gustave 89; Seurat (Paris

1924) 77, 126 (note 30).

JHoRMON (Fernand Piestres), Aca-demy 46, 57.

Corot Camille 17, 20, 25, 26, 52, 85,

119, 125 (note II); The Moulin de

la Galette at Montmartre 3, 4, 19;Rue Saint-Vincent, Montmartre 22,

24, 125 (note II).

Court Adolphe 124 (note 4).

CouRTELiNE Georgcs 61, 78.

Courtenay 58.

CrASTRE Victor, Naissance du Cubisme(Céret 1910) 127 (note 47).

Crau, La 52.

Cubism 85, 98/100, 116, 127 (notes

42,45, 47)-

Dadaism 116.

Daguerre Louis, General View ofParis from Montmartre 20, 23.

Damrémont General 18.

Daulte François, Frédéric Ba-:^ille et

son temps (Gen^ya. 1952) 125 (note

12).

Dax (Landes) 119.

Debray 10.

Debussy Claude 78.

Decius, Emperor 7.

Dedreux-Dorcy Pierre-Joseph 15,

16.

Degas Edgar 27, 28, 32, 34, 38, 50,

61, 70, 77, 80, 109; T/je Absinthe 33,

34; La Grande Danseuse (sculpture)

34; Miss Lala 126 (note 26);

Women in a Café 34, 38.

Delcassé Théophile 100.

Delmet Paul 78.

De Marne Jean-Louis 13.

Denis Maurice 73, 80, 85.

Denis, St 7.

DÉPAQuiT Jules 116.

Desboutins Marcellin 32, 125 (note

15)-

Desportes Félix 8.

DoNNAY Maurice, Eros Vanné 69.

132

DoRBEC Prosper, Uart du paysage en

France, de la fin du XVIII' siècle à

la fin du Second Empire (Paris 1925)

124 (note 5).

DoRGELÈs Roland 105 ; Montmartrey

mon pays (Paris 1928) 128 (note 49)

.

Dreux Alfred de 26.

Druet Gallery 114.

DuFY Raoul 89, 106, 107, 120; RueLepic 107; Shrove Tuesday on Boule-

vard Montmartre 107.

DuRAND-RuEL Gallery 126 (note 31).

DuRRio Paco 90.

DuvERNOis Henri 126 (note 32).

Edward VII, King 76.

Edwards Edwin 29.

Eleutherius, St 7.

Eudes Father 10.

Eugénie, Empress 32.

Evenepoel Henri 77, 126 (note 31);

The Spaniard in Paris (Iturrino) 76,

77-

Fantin-Latour Théodore 28, 29, 31 ;

The Studio at Les Batignolles 28, 29,

3i> 32.

Faure Elie 114.

FÉNÉON Félix 73.

Folie-Sandrin 18.

Fontainebleau, Forest of 12.

Forain Jean-Louis 17, 32, 44, 87,

126 (note 31).

FoREST Père 70.

Franc-Nohain 127 (note 36).

Francis of Sales, St 8.

Futurism 100, 106, 127 (note 46).

Gallimard Paul 114.

Gauguin Paul 52.

Gaumont picture-house 120.

Gautier Théophile 24.

Gavarni (Guillaume-Sulpice Che-valier) 17.

Gay César 115, 116.

Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

19.

Georget Alexandre, UEcho de Paris

125 (note 22).

GÉRARD Frédéric (Frédé) 89, 105,

106, 119.

GÉRiCAULT Théodore 14; The Plaster

Kiln 15.

Germany 24.

Gervex Henri 36.

GiLL André 105.

GoENEUTTE Norbert 32, 36.

GoNCOURT Edmond de 125 (note 14).

GouDEAU Emile 126 (note 29).

Goulue La 64/66, 125 (note 20), 126(note 23).

Goupil, Art Gallery 46, 50.

Goya Francisco 86.

Grande Jatte, Island of La 50, 77.Greco El 86.

Gregory of Tours, St 7.

Grenier 70.

Grenoble, Muséum 26.

Grille d'égout 64.

Gris Juan (José Gonzalès) 92, 93,100, loi, 104, 117, 127 (notes 41,

45); Still Life and Landscape (Place

Ravignan) 94.GuiLBERT Yvette 69; Les Demi-

Vierges (song) 69.

Guillaume Paul 104.

GuiLLAUMiN Armand 26, 52; Mont-martre 2 5

.

GuiNGUET 8.

Halicka Alice 127 (note 44).

Hastings Béatrice 105.

Henri IV, King 8.

Heuzé Edmond 55.

HoGUET Karl 24; The Last Windmills

of Montmartre 125 (note 10).

Holland loi.

Horta de Ebro (Catalonia) 100, 127(note 47).

Hugues Clovis 126 (note 33).

133

134

Ile-de-France 104.

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

52, 78, 87, 104, 124 (note 4).

IsABEY Eugène 26.

Iturrino Francisco 76, 89.

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).

Jacque Charles 14.

Jakovsky 128 (note 55).

Japanese prints 65, 70.

Jarry Alfred 78, 127 (note 36).

Jeanron Philippe-Auguste 14.

JoNGKiND Johann-Barthold 11, 26,

124 (note 4).

Jourdain Francis 61, 113, 114;Toulouse-Lautrec (Paris 1952) 125

note 21); Utrillo (Paris 1953) 128

(note 53).

JoYANT Maurice, Henri de Toulouse-

Lautrec {?2ins 1926) 126 (notes 23,

24, 25).

JuNYER Sébastian 90.

Kahnweiler Daniel-Henry 99,116,127 (note 47); Juan Gris (Paris

1946) 127 (note 41).

Kapferer brothers 114.

Karr Alphonse 17.

Lacourière, master-engraver 122.

La Faille J. B. de. Van Gogh 55.

La Fontaine Jean de 119.

Lamy Franc 36.

Lassaigne Jacques 125 (note 20).

Laurencin Marie 96, 99.Lautrec Henri de Toulouse- 46,

52, 57/70, 79, 80, 82, 85, 87, 107,

120, 125 (notes 18, 20, 21), 126(notes 23, 24, 25, 31), 128 (note 51);Posters: Aristide Bruant 60, 61, 73;May Belfort 69; May Milton 89;The Moulin Rouge 58, 59, 65;

Paintings: A la mie 125 (note 20);At the Moulin Rouge 63; TheCireus-Rider 66, 126 (note 26) ; TheClown Boum-Boum at the Cirque

Fernando 66, 68; A Corner in the

Moulin de la Galette 67; Gueule de

Bois 125 (note 20); Jane AvrilDancing 66; The Moulin Rouge 62,

63 ;Quadrille de la chaise Louis XIII

à rElysée-Montmartre 125 (note

20); The Trace Horse oj the BusLine^ Place Clichy 56, 57.

Laynez Diego 124 (note i).

Lefevre Pierre 124 (note i).

Leopardi Giacomo 103.

LiBAUDE, picture-dealer 113, 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).

Mac Orlan Pierre 82, 104; Villes

(Paris 1929) 126 (note 34).

Magazines and Papers: UAmi duPeuple %\ UAssiette au Beurre 76;Le Constitutionnel 124 (note 6);

UEscarmouche 73; Le Gil BlasIllustré 64, 99, 126 (note 27);E Impressionniste 38; Le Mercurede France 126 (note 31), 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

3 9) ; La Vache Enragée iiG', La VieParisienne 70.

Maître Edmond 27/29, 31.

Maizeroy René, article in the GilBlas Illustré 69, 126 (note 27).

Mallarmé Stéphane 34.

Manet Edouard 26/32, 35, 126(note 31); Che^i le Père Lathuile 41 ;

Portrait oJ George Moore 35.

lÉ

Manolo Manuel Martincz 93.

Manyac Pedro 86, 89.

Marat Jean-Paul, UAmi du Peuple

8.

Marcoussis Louis (Louis Markous)99, 100, 102, 127 (note 44); TheSacré-Cœur 98.

Marguery-Dupaty 124 (note 3).

Marquet Albert 89, 126 (note 31).

Matisse Henri 96, 99, 118, 119,

126 (note 31).

Méric, near Montpellier 28.

Michel Georges 10, 11, 13, 14, 18,

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

of Montmartre 1 1

.

Millet Jean-François 14.

MiRBEAU Octave 114.

Modigliani Amedeo 99, 103/106,

117, 128 (notes 48, 51); Portrait ofMax Jacob ^^\The Violoncellist 128

(note 51).

MÔME Fromage, La 64.

MoNCEY Marshal 9, 124 (note 3).

MoNET Claude 27/32, 34, 48, 50.

Monticelli Adolphe 109.

Montmorency 25.

MooRE George 35.

MoREAu Gustave 77, 126 (note 31).

Moscow, Muséum of Modem West-ern Art 89.

Moulin de la Galette 3, 4, 17, 19, 21,

23> 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 47, 55, 61, 65,

67, 77, 87, 102, 103, 108, 119, 120,

128 (note 55).

Napoléon 57.

Napoléon III 93.Neo-Impressionism 104.

Nerval Gérard de 17, 18; Aurélia

18; La Bohême Galante 18, 124(note 8).

Nice 69, 126 (note 31).

NiCHOLAS, Grand Duke 76.

Nonell Isidro 86.

Normandy 12.

Offenbach Jacques 64.

Olivier Fernande 92, 100, 104, 127(note 47); Picasso et ses amis (Paris

1954) 127 (note 40).

Oller brothers 61, 64.

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale 125(note II), 126 (note 23); LouvreII, 15, 46, 86, 124 (note 4); id..

Cabinet des Dessins 38, 124(note 4); Musée Carnavalet 23;Musée du Luxembourg 86;Sacré-Cœur 10, 44, 45, 81, 97, 98,102, 103, 104, 116, 120, 121, 122,

127 (note 44), 128 (note 55);St Peter's 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); Montparnasse101,117.Avenue de Clichy 27, 32, 46;Avenue Frochot 26, 70; Avenuede Ségur 1 3 ; Avenue Trudaine78, 1 13 ; Avenue de Villiers 104.

Boulevard des BatignoUes 73, 81;

Bd de la Chapelle 96 ; Bd de Clichy

34, 49, 61, 79, 89, 96, 100, 105,

122, 127 (note 44); Bd Mont-martre 46, 78, 80; Bd Roche-chouart 57, 66; Bd Voltaire 90.

Butte Pinson 109.

Chaussée des Martyrs 14, 16.

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

77-Impasse Cauchois 26; ImpasseGirardon 44; Impasse de Guelma86, 106, 109, 120.

Passage de l'Elysée des Beaux-Arts 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 (nowRue Christiani) lo; Place Pigalle

26, 32, 34, 100, 103, 106; Place

Ravignan 89,94,114; Place duTertre103, 116, 118, 121, 128 (note 55).

Quai d'Anjou 52; Quai Saint-

Michel 96.

Rue de l'Abreuvoir 128 (note 55);Rue Ballu 103, 127 (note 36); RueBerthe 93; Rue Blanche 82; RueBoissonnade 105; Rue Caulain-

court 70, 77, 103, 121; Rue Cham-pollion 90; Rue Le Chapelais 73;Rue du Chevalier de la Barre 10,

112; Rue Clauzel 50; Rue deClichy 8; Rue Coquillière 64;Rue Cortot 36, 37, 58, 109, 119;Rue des Dames 32; Rue Damré-mont 74; Rue de Douai 73, 105;Rue de l'Elysée des Beaux-Arts106; Rue Fontaine 34, 69, 70, 77;Rue Gabrielle 86; Rue Ganneron70; Rue Carreau 92; Rue Junot119; Rue Laffitte 89; Rue Lam-bert 128 (note 52); Rue Laval(now Rue Victor-Masse) 46, 57;Rue Lepic 44, 46, 55, 77, 103/105;Rue de Londres 19; Rue duMont-Cenis 8, 44, 112; RueMuller iio, m; Rue Norvins 18,

55, 105; Rue d'Orchampt 24, 26,

1

1

5 ; Rue de la Paix (now Rue dela Condamine) 28; Rue Pigalle

70, 74, 77; Rue du Poteau iio;

Rue Ravignan (now Place EmileGoudeau) 90, 93, 100; Rue LaRochefoucauld 77; Rue des

Rosiers 17; Rue Saint-Denis 18;

Rue Saint-Georges 34, 36, 37; RueSaint-Rustique 128 (note 55); RueSaint-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 Tho-lozé 84; Rue Tourlaque 44, 70, 73 ;

Rue Victor-Masse 90; Rue de la

Vieille-Lanterne 124 (note 9);Rue Vignon 99; Rue Visconti 28.

Square d'Anvers 109; SquareSaint-Pierre 78; Square Vintimille

(now Place Adolphe Max) 80.

Petit Eugène 32.

Pfannstiel Arthur, Modigliani (Paris

1929) 128 (note 48).

Picasso Pablo 86, 87, 89, 90, 92,

93, 96, 98/104, 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; TheMoulin de la Galette 87; Portrait

of Gustave Coquiot 89; Portrait ofVollard 100; Portrait of Uhde 100.

PiCHOT Ramon 90.

Pissarro Camille 27, 48, 5 0,78, 89, 109 ;

The OuterBoulevards 4 8 ; Street inMont-martre 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 64.

Realism 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

the 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 ofM^^ Charpentier iG\ The Swing 36.

136

Reuillard Gabriel, Le cinquante-

naire du Bateau-Lavoir in Le Monde(January 21, 1952) 127 (note 43).

Rictus Jehan 74.

Rivière Georges 32, 37; article in

U Impressionniste 38; Renoir et ses

amis (Paris 1921) 125 (notes 15,

16).

RoDRiGUEZ Simon 124 (note i).

RouAULT Georges 126 (note 31).

RouDLARS Perrette 124 (note i).

Rousseau Henri (Le Douanier) 99,100, 103, 127 (note 39).

Rousseau Théodore 14, 120; Storm

Ejfect. View of Montmartre 12, 14.

Roussel Ker-Xavier 73, 80.

RusTicus, St 7.

RuYSDAEL Jacob-Isaac 13.

Sabartès Jaime 89, 90; Picasso^

portraits et souvenirs (Paris 1 946) 127(note 38).

Sagot Clovis 104,113.Salis Rodolphe 57, 58, 78, 120.

Salmeron Alfonso 124 (note i).

Salmon André 96.

Salon 1868 28; Salon 1870 28;

Salon d'Automne 1908 99; Salondes Indépendants 119.

Sarah 64.

Sarrazin Jehan 69.

Satie Erik 78, 109.

Schôlderer Otto 29.

Segatori, La 52.

Seine 30, 91.

Sensier Alfred 13, 14.

Sescau Paul 63.

Seurat Georges 50, 73, 77, 126 (note

30); The Circus 66, 71, 77, 126 (note

26); A Sunday Afternoon on the

Island of La Grande Jatte 50, 77.Severini Gino 100, 103, 104, 106,

117; Danseuses à Monico 102, 106;

Fête à Montmartre 106; Nord-Sudloi; Springtime in Montmartre 104.

SiMONET 125 (note 13).

SiSLEY Alfred 34, 48, 50; View ofMontmartre 26.

Smithson Henrietta 18, 19.

Spain 90, 100.

Stein Gertrude and Léo 99, 1 27 (note

47).Steinlen Théophile-Alexandre 17,

58, 74, 76, 87, loi, 116, 126(note 31); Moulin Rouge 76.

Stevens Alfred 32.

Stumpp Marguerite 126 (note 29).

Switzerland 12.

Sue Eugène 18.

Suresnes 18.

Symbolism 80.

Symons Arthur 64; London Nights

66.

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

Tanguy Père 50, 52, 53.Tapie de Céleyran Gabriel 63.

Terrasse Claude 127 (note 36);Lieds de Montmartre 78; Panthéon-

Courcelles 126 (note 35).

Théâtre des Pantins 127 (note 36).

Thoré Théophile, article in LeConstitutionnel 14, 124 (note 6).

Tige, La 65.

Toulouse 70.

Troyon Constant 26.

Uhde Wilhelm 100.

Utrillo Maurice 20, 86, 104, 106/

120, 122, 128 (notes 52, 53, 54);The Arrest 128 (note 5 2) ; The LapinAgile 117; The Moulins de la Ga-lette 108; Place Ravignan 114;Place du Tertre 118; Renoir's Garden

113; Rue Cortôt 119; Rue Muller

III ; Rue d'Orchampt 115; Terrace

in Rue Muller iio,

Utrillo Miguel 86., 109.

Utter André 106, 109, 119.

137

1

Valadon Suzanne 104, 106, 109,

112, 120; Portrait ofErik Satie 109.

Valentin Le Désossé (JacquesRenaudin) 63, 64, 126 (note 23).

Vallotton Félix 73, 80.

Van Dongen Kees loi.

Van Gogh-Bonger M.^^ 50, 52,

125 (note 19); Letters from Vincent

van Gogh to his Brother Théo (Amster-dam 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; Mont-martre (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 25.

Vauxcelles Louis 99.

Venice 44.

Venturi Lionello 26.

Verlaine Paul 78.

Vermeer Jan 20.

Vernet Horace 14, 124 (note 3);

Défense of Paris at the Clichy Toll-

Gate 9, 14, 124 (note 3).

Vésinet, Le 119.

Vigny Alfred de 18.

Villejuif Asylum 116.

Villon François 10.

Vincent of Paul, St 8.

ViviN Louis 120, 121, 128 (note 55);The Sacré-Cœur 121, 128 (note 55);The Moulin de la Galette^ The MoulinRouge^ Rue de rAbreuvoir^ Rue Saint-

Rustique^ St Peter's Church^ ThePlace du Tertre in Winter 128 (note 55).

ViziER Marie 128 (note 52).

VoLLARD Ambroise, Gallery 8, 100,

104.

VoLLON Antoine, The Moulin de la

Galette 21, 23.

VuiLLARD Edouard 73, 80; Place

Clichy 82.

Wagner Richard 28.

Weill Berthe, Gallery 86,

Willette Adolphe 116.

90.

Xanrof, Le Fiacre (song) 69.

Xavier Francis 124 (note i).

Yaki Paul 55; Montmartre^ terre des

artistes (Paris 1947) 124 (note 7),

128 (note 50).

ZlDLER 61, 64.

Zola Emile 29, 31.

THE COLORPLATES

BAZILLE, Frédéric (i 841-1870). The Studio, détail: Monet, Manet,Bazille, 1870. Louvre, Paris 30

The Studio, détail: Edmond Maître playing the Piano, 1870.

Louvre, Paris 31

BELLARDEL, Napoléon-Joseph (1831-?). Rue d'Orchampt at

Montmartre in 1864. (10^4x12%^) Musée Carnavalet, Paris. . 24

BONNARD, Pierre (i 867-1947). Sketch of a Poster for the MoulinRouge, ca. 1892. (10^x7%") • 72

The Boulevard, ca. 1904. (32^x16%^) Mr and Mrs Alex L.

Hillman Collection, New York 75

Boulevard de Clichy by Night, ca. 1907. (iô^AxiS'/bO FormerlyMaurice Denis Collection 79

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

Paris 81

Place Clichy, 191 2. (55x801/20 Private Collection, Paris ... 83

Rue Tholozé, Montmartre, 191 7. (26x13720 Mr and Mrs RalphF. Colin Collection, New York 84

BOUHOT, Etienne (1780-1862). St Peter's Church, Montmartre,ca. 1825. (11 '/s XI 33/8") Musée Carnavalet, Paris 16

BRAQUE, Georges (1882). The Sacré-Cœur, 1910. (21 72X16%'')Private Collection, Roubaix 97

CÉZANNE, Paul (18 39-1 906). Rue des Saules, Montmartre, 1867-

1869. (12Î/2X16V8O Georges Renand Collection, Paris .... 23

COROT, Camille (1796-1875). The Moulin de la Galette at Mont-martre (détail), 1840. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva . . 3

The Moulin de la Galette at Montmartre, 1840. (io%xi3%'')Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva 19

Rue Saint-Vincent, Montmartre, ca. 1850-1860. (i^YzXi^Vi")Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons 22

DAGUERRE, Louis (1787-185 1). General View of Paris fromMontmartre, ca. 1830. (9x14720 Musée Carnavalet, Paris . . 20

139

DEGAS, Edgar (1834-1917). The Absinthe (détail), 1876-1877.Louvre, Paris 33

Women in a Café at Montmartre (détail), 1877. Pastel on Mono-type. Louvre (Cabinet des Dessins), Paris 38

EVENEPOEL, Henri (1872-1899). The Spaniard in Paris (Iturrino),

détail, 1899. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ghent 76

FANTIN-LATOUR, Théodore (18 36-1 904). The Studio at LesBatignolles, 1870. (8oy4Xio6") Louvre, Paris 29

GÉRICAULT, Théodore (i 791-1824). The Plaster Kiln, 1 822-1 824.(i9%x24''') Louvre, Paris 15

GRIS, Juan (i 887-1927). Still Life and Landscape (Place Ravignan),

191 5. (45%X35") Walter and Louise Arensberg Collection,

Muséum of Art, Philadelphia 94

GUILLAUMIN, Armand (i 841-1927). Montmartre, 1865.

(ziViXz^Yz'') Private Collection, Geneva 25

MANET, Edouard (i 832-1 883). Portrait of George Moore, ca. 1879.(253/4X32") Mrs Ralph J. Hines Collection, New York ... 35

Chez le père Lathuile (détail), 1879. Musée des Beaux-Arts,Tournai 41

MARCOUSSIS, Louis (1883 - 1941). The Sacré-Cœur, 1910.

(15x20^2") Mme Alice Halicka Collection, Paris 98

MICHEL, Georges (1763-1843). View of Montmartre. (7x113/4''')

Watercolor Drawing. Louvre (Cabinet des Dessins), Paris . . 11

MODIGLIANI, Amedeo (1884-1920). Portrait of Max Jacob, 1916-

1917. (3672 X23y2''') Private Collection, Paris 95

PICASSO, Pablo (1881). The Moulin de la Galette, 1900.(24 14 x 34^20Collection of Mr and Mrs J. K. Thannhauser, New York . . 87

Bal Tabarin, 1901. (27^2 x 21'') By Courtesy of Mr T. E. Hanley,Bradford, Pa 88

The Blue Room, 1901. (20x241/2") Phillips Collection,

Washington 91

140

PISSARRO, Camille (1830-1903). The Outer Boulevards, 1879.

(21 Î4x 25340 Musée Marmottan, Paris 48

RENOIR, Auguste (i 841-19 19). The Moulin de la Galette (détail),

1876. Louvre, Paris 39

In a Café, 1 876-1 877. (i3y4Xii'') Rijksmuseum KrôUer-Mûller,

Otterlo 40

Place Clichy, ca. 1880. (z4ViXziy/') Collection of the Rt. Hon.R. A. Butler, London 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. View of Mont-martre. (9x14") Louvre, Paris 12

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

(2iy2Xi8'0 Louvre, Paris 71

SEVERINI, Gino (1883). Nord-Sud, 191 2. (19^4x25") Emilio Jesi

Collection, Milan loi

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

Geneva 102

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Henri de (i 864-1901). The Trace Horseof the Bus Line, Place Clichy, 1888. (321/4x20^2") Private

Collection, Paris 56

Poster for the Moulin Rouge. La Goulue, 1891. (761/2x48")

R. G. Michel Collection, Paris 59

Aristide Bruant in his Cabaret, 1893. (5oX36y8'0 Poster.

R. G. Michel Collection, Paris 60

The Moulin Rouge, détail: Valentin le Désossé, 1890. ByCourtesy of Mr Henry P. Mcllhenny, Philadelphia 62

At the Moulin Rouge, détail: Dr Gabriel Tapie de Céleyran,

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Sescau, 1892. By Courtesy ofthe Art Institute of Chicago 63

A Corner in the Moulin de la Galette, 1892. (40x39'') Mr andMrs Chester Dale Collection, New York 67

The Clown Boum-Boum at the Cirque Fernando, 1893.(2272X14^2") Mrs Chauncey McCormick Collection, Chicago 68

141

UTRILLO, Maurice (1883-1955). The Moulins de la Galette,

ca. 191 1. (28%x2o%'') Private Collection, Paris 108

Terrace in Rue Muller, 1912. (19^x24'') Private Collection,

Bern iio

Rue Muller, 1909. (iSy^xi^Vi') Private Collection, Paris. . mRenoir*s Garden, 1909-1910. (21x313/4") By Courtesy ofMr Grégoire Tarnopol, New York 113

Place Ravignan, 1911-1915. (z^ViXzSVz") By Courtesy ofMr Grégoire Tarnopol, New York 114

Rue d'Orchampt, 1912. (21 X28%") By Courtesy of Mr GrégoireTarnopol, New York 115

The Lapin Agile, 191 3. (22%X29y8'0 Private Collection,

Montreux (Switzerland) 117

Place du Tertre, 1920. (i9y8X23%'') Private Collection, Zurich 118

VAN GOGH, Vincent (18 5 3-1 890). The Moulin de la Galette,

1886-1888. (15x18'') Private Collection 47

Boulevard de Clichy, 1886-1888. (181/4x21%'') V. W. Van GoghCollection, Amsterdam 49

Montmartre (Le Café du Point de Vue), 1 886-1 888. (17 y* x 13 1/4")

By Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago 51

Le Père Tanguy, 1 887-1 888. (3 6 y* x 28 y*") Musée Rodin, Paris 53

La Guinguette, ca. 1886. (i9%X33y2") Louvre, Paris .... 54

VERNET, Horace (1789-1863). Défense of Paris at the Clichy

Toll-Gate (March 30, 1814), 1820. (38y8X5iy4") Louvre, Paris 9

VIVIN, Louis (1861-1936). The Sacré-Cœur, ca. 1920. (2o3Ax28%'')Van der Klip Collection, Paris 121

VOLLON, Antoine (1833-1900). The Moulin de la Galette, ca. 1860.

(i2y2Xioy4") Musée Carnavalet, Paris 21

VUILLARD, Edouard (i 868-1 940). Place Clichy seen from Boule-

vard des Batignolles, ca. 19 10. (30% x 37 y4") Distemper Painting.

Jacques Salomon Collection, Paris 82

142

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 7

THE FIRST PICTURES OF MONTMARTRE II

THE BATIGNOLLES GROUP 27

TRANSIT OF VAN GOGH 46

LAUTREC'S PERAMBULATIONS 57

BONNARD AND THE REVUE BLANCHE ARTISTS ... 73

THE BATEAU-LAVOIR AND IMPASSE DE GUELMA . . 86

UTRILLO'S MONTMARTRE 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

SKiRACOLOR STUDIO

AT IMPRIMERIES REUNIES S.A., LAUSANNE

FINISHED THE FIFTEENTH DAY OF MARCHNINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX

The plates were engraved by Renouâtd et Guezelle, Paris

except for that on page 35, engraved by

Photogravure Reymond, Lausanne.

Photographs were taken by Louis Laniepce, Paris

(pages 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),

by Hans Hinz, Basel (pages 3, 19, 45, 4'j, 94, 102, iio, iiy, 118),

by Claudio Emmer, Milan (page loi),

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

muÀiiJT

m^E TASTE OF OUR TIME

MONOGRAPHS

FR \ ,^.v »MCO - BOSCH - EL GRECOPIER > iJELLA FRANCESCA - BOTTICELLIGIOTTO - CARPACCIO - BRUEGEL - GOYAVELAZQUEZ - REMBRANDT - MANETDEGAS - CÉZANNE - RENOIR - GAUGUINLAUTREC - VAN GOGH - ROUAULTMONET - MODIGLIANI - MATISSE - DUFYPICASSO - CHAGALL - KLEE - BRAQUE

LÉGER - MIRÔ - CHARDIN

Forthcoming

BONNARD

THE GREAT ART REVOLUTIONS

ROMANTICISMIMPRESSIONISM (2 VOLUMES)

CUBISM - FAUVISM - SURREALISM

Forthcoming

COURBET AND REALISM

FAMOUS PLACESAS SEEN BY GREAT PAINTERS

r

35JÎ3î3i533

MONTMARTRE - VENICEPARIS IN THE PASTPARIS IN OUR TIME

m!. J. in the United States by

LD PUBLISHING COMPANY>3I WEST IIOTH STREETCLEVELAND 2, OHIO

FAMOUS PLACES AS SEEN BY GREAT PAINTERS

You know and love the Montmartre of Utrillo, the Place du

Tertre, the Sacred Heart basilica, the Moulin de la Galette

innmortalized by Renoir, the Moulin Rouge where Lautrec

was a nightiy visitor, the Montmartre Van Gogh discovered.

But what about the Clichy toll-gate, painted by Horace

Vernet, where Napoleon's troops made their last stand?

What about the countrified Montmartre of Georges Michel,

the quarries of Géricault and the windmills of Corot?

For you this book will recreate the gatherings in the

Batignolles quarter of Paris where Impressionism was

born, the old "Bateau-Lavoir" of the Cubists, the affable,

familiar Paris of Bonnard. Painters and poets are your

guide in this stroll through time from the Montmartre

of the Romantics to the Montmartre Utrillo knew.

THE TASTE OF OUR TIME

Printed in Switzerland