1.The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, Camden Press, London, 1986, p. 139.
2.Ibid., p. 161.
3.This manuscript has unfortunately been lost and we have had to work from a typescript and the 1979 edition.
4.The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot with Her Family and Her Friends: Manet, Puvis de Chavannes, Degas, Monet, Renoir and Mallarmé, ed. Denis Rouart, trans. Betty W. Hubbard, Camden, London, 1986, pp. 9–10. Originally published as Correspondance de Berthe Morisot avec sa famille et ses amis: Manet, Puvis de Chavannes, Degas, Monet, Renoir et Mallarmé, ed. Denis Rouart, Quatre Chemins-Éditart, Paris, 1950.
5.Le Balcon, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 2772.
6.Le repos, RISD Museum, Providence RI , inv. 59.027.
7.Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1998 30.
8.There seems to have been a certain rivalry between the Morisot sisters and Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), shown in a letter from Berthe to her sister Edma: ‘Manet lectures me and holds up that eternal Mademoiselle Gonzalès as an example.’ To which she replied: ‘The thought of Mademoiselle Gonzalès irritates me, I do not know why. I imagine Manet greatly overestimates her, and that we, or rather you, have as much talent as she.’ The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, p. 44.
9.‘The Salon is the real field of battle; these little arenas bore me so!’; quoted in Nathaniel Harris, The Art of Manet, Optimum Books, London, 1982, p. 58.
10.Berthe Morisot only missed one Impressionist exhibition: in 1879 when Julie was a baby.
11.Julie’s nickname.
12.The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, p. 115.
13.The conference on Villiers de l’Isle Adam took place on 24 February 1890.
14.Henri Mondor, La Vie de Stéphane Mallarmé, Gallimard, Paris, 1946, p. 574.
15.Berthe Morisot had the plaster cast in bronze during her lifetime and it was exhibited in 1887 at Georges Petit. Three further casts of this plaster were made in bronze by Julie Manet for each of her three sons.
16.The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, pp. 184, 185.
17.Ibid., p. 194.
18.Ibid., p. 197.
19.Between the rue Pergolèse and the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement.
20.See p. 61 in Julie’s diary.
21.The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, p. 139.
22.Jeanne Baudot, Renoir, ses amis, ses modèles, Éditions Littéraires de France, Paris, 1949, pp. 77–9.
23.See R.H. Wilenski, Modern French Painters, Faber, London, 1940, p. 157.
24.Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father, Collins, London, 1962, p. 229.
25.Renoir married Aline Charigot on 14 April 1890.
26.Claire Joyes, Andrew Forge, Jean-Marie Toulgouat and Robert Gordon, Monet at Giverny, Mathews Miller Dunbar, London, 1975, pp. 15–23.
27.In the 9th arrondissement at the foot of Montmartre.
28.Monsieur Prud’homme was a character created by the artist and actor Henry Monnier (1799–1877), who had a special talent for stating the obvious!
29.In Roy McMullen, Degas: his Life, Times and Work, Secker & Warburg, London, 1985, p. 445.
30.Pablo Casals (1876–1973) was a Spanish cellist and conductor from Catalonia. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the twentieth century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time.
31.Julie’s maid.
32.Julie’s greyhound, a gift from Mallarmé. Laertes was the father of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, but was also the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
33.Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), a poet who was the main exponent of the Symbolist movement. He met Berthe Morisot through his friend Manet, who had painted his portrait in 1876. Mallarmé and Berthe Morisot became great friends, and when she died in 1895 he became Julie’s guardian.
34.The Palace of Fontainebleau or Château de Fontainebleau is located 55 kilometres south-east of the centre of Paris, and is one of the largest French royal châteaux.
35.Stéphane Mallarmé’s country house at Vulaines-sur-Seine, near Valvins in the Seine-et-Marne area, was a converted inn that he bought in 1874. In 1902, his daughter Geneviève and her husband Edmond Bonniot bought the property and filled it with mementoes from the poet’s flat in Paris. In 1946 it was listed. It was bought by the local authority in 1985, which opened it as a museum in 1992.
36.André Rossignol (1865–1925), a composer who wrote the music for ‘Appari-tion’, a poem by Mallarmé, which was published in 1894 with illustrations by Maurice Denis.
37.Camille Mauclair (1872–1945), poet, author and critic. He succeeded Albert Aurier as art critic of Mercure de France in 1893.
38.Julie’s ‘Oncle Parrain’, in fact ‘uncle–godfather’, the judge Maître Anatole Jules de Jouy (1815–1894), was a cousin of her father’s and was a witness at her parents’ wedding in 1874.
39.Édouard Manet’s widow, Suzanne Leenhoff (1830–1906), was a Dutch-born pianist, who, although she met Manet in 1851, did not marry him until October 1863, a year after the death of Édouard’s father.
40.Julie had been given a new box of crayons for Christmas.
41.Private collection.
42.Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898), a leading Symbolist muralist and painter in the classical tradition, friend of Degas and the Impressionists, who frequently visited Berthe Morisot and attended her Thursday dinners.
43.Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), a leading member of the Impressionist group. He was a pupil of Gleyre and a friend of Monet, Bazille and Sisley. It is difficult to determine when he first met Berthe Morisot – their close friendship dated from the 1880s. His wife was the former Aline Charigot (1868–1915).
44.In 1889, Renoir and his family moved into number 6 in what was called ‘the Château des Brouillards’ at 13 rue Girardon on Montmartre, which earned its name not because it was grand and luxurious but because of its situation on the Butte.
45.Pierre Renoir (1885–1952).
46.11 boulevard de Clichy.
47.Maître Fermé was a solicitor or ‘notaire’ in Suresnes.
48.Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1922-3-84.
49.Dr Thomas W. Evans (1823–1897) was an American-born dentist and clever businessman who lived in Paris in a luxurious hôtel particulier with a staircase by Charles Garnier at 43 avenue du Bois de Boulogne (demolished in 1906). He treated many heads of state, including Napoleon III, and facilitated the flight of the Empress Eugénie in 1870,
50.Members of a Protestant religious sect which was founded in seventeenth-century Great Britain but which later was especially prevalent in the United States and the Netherlands. It was based on pacifism, philanthropy and austerity. We can imagine that these might have been American Quaker ladies visiting Paris.
51.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1947 11.
52.Henriette de Bonnières (1854–1906), wife of the Figaro journalist and novelist Robert de Bonnières (1850–1905), held a well-known salon and was painted by Forain, Helleu and Jacques-Émile Blanche.
53.Mademoiselle Burty’s husband, Charles Haviland (1839–1921), porcelain manufacturer at Limoges and Auteuil. He was a great friend of Renoir, who painted his son Paul in 1884. After World War I, he supplied Julie Manet with the porcelain that she used to decorate.
54.Eugène Delacroix (1799–1863), leading painter of the Romantic school, who influenced the Impressionists by his free use of colour and impasto, his exotic subjects, and his passion for light and movement in painting. His diary is still read by the serious artist and art historian.
55.‘Les arènes de la rue Pergolèse’ was a Spanish-style arena built in 1889 that presented concerts, shows and even bullfights. It was demolished at the end of 1893.
56.In 1875, Marie-Elisabeth Rochegrosse, née Bourotte (1828–1904), married the poet Théodore de Banville (1823–1891) a close friend of Victor Hugo and discoverer of Arthur Rimbaud, famous for his ‘odes funambulesques’.
57.Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti-Mirabeau, comtesse de Martel de Janville (1849–1932), whose pseudonym was GYP, was a novelist, pamphlet-eer and political journalist. A fierce anti-Semite and an anti-Dreyfus campaign supporter, she wrote for La Libre Parole between 1899 and 1901.
58.Julie’s cousins, the children of Edma and Adolphe Pontillon.
59.Cousins, daughters of Yves and Théodore Gobillard.
60.The Gobillards’ maid.
61.Julie’s Manet grandparents, Auguste and Eugénie Manet. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1977 12.
62.Comte Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1840–1889), Symbolist poet and author, who died almost unknown and unread, although his work was admired by poets and especially his friends Mallarmé and Baudelaire.
63.Gabriel Thomas (1848–1911), son of Octave Thomas and Berthe Morisot’s first cousin on her mother’s side, was a rich financier and a patron of the arts. He financed the Musée Grévin and the Tour Eiffel and later the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, for which he commissioned Maurice Denis and Antoine Bourdelle. He also wrote and owned the newspaper Le Gaulois. Les enfants de Gabriel Thomas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. REF 1945 13.
64.The composer André Rossignol; see note 36.
65.In October 1893 there was an official visit of the Russian Navy to France. The warships arrived at Toulon on 13 October and the officers were then welcomed in Paris on 17 October with a dinner and ball at the Elysée Palace. Over the next few days they attended a torchlight procession through the streets of Paris, a banquet on the Champ-de-Mars, boat parties on the Seine, a firework display and many other social engagements before leaving on 24 October. Amidst all these festivities,, the state funeral of Mac Mahon took place on 22 October.
66.Comte Marie Edme Patrice de Mac Mahon (1808–1893), Grand-Marshal of France and distinguished statesman. After an exemplary military career, in 1873 he was elected second president of the Third Republic by the Monarchist coalition, an office he held until a Republican majority forced his resignation.
67.Monet’s country property at Giverny, which he acquired in 1890 and where he lived for the last years of his life. It is notable especially for the water garden which inspired Monet’s Nymphéas pictures.
68.Claude Monet (1840–1926), founder member and recognized as one of the greatest painters of the Impressionist group. He spent his childhood in Le Havre, went to Paris in 1859, and met Camille Pissarro at the Atelier Suisse. He knew Manet by 1866 but it is not certain when he met Berthe Morisot. By the time Julie began her diary, he was already an established figure. His second wife, Alice Hoschedé Monet, was first married to Ernest Hoschedé. In 1878, she and her six children came to live with the Monets at Vétheuil, after the bankruptcy of her husband, and she continued to live with Monet after the death of his wife Camille, marrying him in 1892.
69.The Rouen Cathedral paintings, of which there were more than 30, were painted in 1892 and 1893, then reworked in Monet’s studio in 1894. Monet rented spaces across the street from the Cathedral, where he set up temporary studios for the purpose. Each painting captures the facade of the Rouen Cathedral at different times of the day and year, and reflects changes in its appearance.
70.Blanche Hoschedé Monet (1865–1947), Monet’s stepdaughter.
71.Theodore Earl Butler (1861–1936) was an American impressionist painter. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Paris to study art. He befriended Claude Monet in Giverny, and married his stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé (1864–1899). After her premature death, he married her sister, Marthe Hoschedé (1864–1921). Butler was a founding member of the Society of Independent Artists.
72.The eighteenth-century Château du Mesnil Saint-Laurent at Juziers, between Meulan and Mantes.
73.The Colonne Orchestra, known as the ‘Concerts Colonne’, a French symphony orchestra based at the Châtelet Théâtre, founded in 1873 by the violinist and conductor Édouard Colonne (1838–1910), who was a passionate enthusiast of French composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Gounod and, later, Ravel and Debussy.
74.Adèle Franck-Cahn, soprano at the l’Opéra Comique, whose husband was the pianist Edmond Duvernoy (1844–1927).
75.‘Erlkönig’ is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe depicting the death of a child assailed by a supernatural being, the Erlking or ‘Erlkönig’. It was originally written by Goethe as part of a 1782 Singspiel entitled ‘Die Fischerin’, then set to music by Franz Schubert.
76.Lina Pacary (1868–1952), a well-known soprano.
77.An opera by Charles Gounod (1818–1893), which premiered at the Paris Opera in February 1862.
78.Julie’s godfather had had a stroke.
79.Paule and Jeannie’s brother, Marcel Gobillard (1872–1921/22)
80.Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884), young Russian painter and writer, who exhibited at the Salon and worked in a realist style close to that of Jules Bastien-Lepage, with whom she was romantically linked. Her outspoken Journal, which was published in 1887 after her death from consumption, was widely read and discussed by artists.
81.Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942), the son of Dr Émile Blanche, a noted pathologist; he grew up in a cultured home and became a well-known figure in artistic and society circles. Much influenced by Manet at the beginning of his career, he was a friend of Degas, Renoir, Whistler, the writers Henry James and Marcel Proust, and many other celebrities. His best-known works are stylish portraits of people from this milieu.
82.Théodore de Wyzewa (1862–1917) was a writer, critic and translator of Polish descent, born in Russia, who emigrated to France in 1869. He was a leading supporter of the Symbolist movement in France. With Édouard Dujardin, he founded La Revue Wagnérienne in 1885. He admired Mallarmé’s poetry and Berthe Morisot’s painting. He was an obsessive anti-Dreyfusard.
83.Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), L’enfance de Jupiter, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 1405.
84.Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1684–1745), Portrait de famille, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. RF 1942.2.
85.At 7 rue Royale, the ‘Institut de langues vivantes’ was founded in 1860 by Charles Rudy, an American of Swiss origin. His Institute offered not only courses in most languages and a popular ‘crammer’ course for both baccalaure-ate exams but also courses in art, music and art history for young ladies of the bourgeoisie.
86.The Church of Saint-Roch is a late baroque church in Paris, dedicated to Saint Roch, patron saint of artists. Located at 284 rue Saint-Honoré in the 1st arrondissement, it was built between 1653 and 1740.
87.Berthe Morisot painted the portrait of her good friend Marie Hubbard in 1874. The painting remained in the family of her brother, Gustave-Adolphe Hubbard (1858–1927), a Member of Parliament for the Seine et Oise. It was acquired by the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens and is at present at the Ordrupgaardsamlingen at Charlottenlund in Copenhagen.
88.Henri Van Cutsem (1839–1904) was a rich hotelier in Brussels who collected art.
89.Quentin Metsys (1466–1530), Le Calvaire, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. 1236.
90.Argenteuil, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Belgium.
91.André Collin (1862–1930), a Belgian artist to whom the art collector Henri Van Cutsem left the château de Ronfays in his will.
92.Salon de la Libre Esthétique, 17 February–15 March 1894.
93.Berthe Morisot exhibited four paintings: no. 320, Sous la Véranda; no. 321, Paysanne couchée; no. 322, Tête de jeune fille; no. 323, Marine.
94.Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931), Belgian violinist, composer and conductor.
95.Octave Maus (1856–1919), Belgian lawyer, writer and art critic. He was a founder of the influential art exhibition The XX (1884–93) and La Libre Esthétique (1894–1914).
96.Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908), Spanish violinist and composer.
97.Théodore Duret (1838–1927), a wealthy cognac dealer, Republican journalist and art critic, who became an apologist for the avant-garde when he published his pamphlet on the Impressionist painters. His collection of works by all the major artists of his time was dispersed in 1894.
98.The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, inv. 59 027.
99.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Belgium.
100.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1944.18.
101.Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) exhibited with the Impressionists but remained apart from them in artistic terms; his preoccupation with form, modelling and perspective led his art to the brink of abstraction. Rejected time after time by the Salon juries, Cézanne’s deep commitment to his work coupled with his serious nature and difficult temperament caused him to live and work in isolation at Aix for much of his career, though he received visits there from Renoir, Berthe Morisot and other painters. Cézanne only began to achieve great success in the final years of his life.
102.Kunsthaus, Zurich. Albert Wolff (1835–1891), French writer and dramatist of German descent, who was sometime theatre critic of Le Figaro. A hostile review of his on the 1876 Impressionist Exhibition referred to Berthe Morisot as a ‘lunatic’, after which it was reported that Eugène Manet had to be prevented from challenging Wolff to a duel.
103.Paul-Albert Bartholomé (1848–1928), French painter and sculptor, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He married the daughter of a marquis, Prospérie de Fleury, but she died at a young age in 1887. Much encouraged by his best friend Degas, he executed the moving sculpture which marked his wife’s grave in Crépy-en-Valois. From 1891 onwards, he gave up painting and concentrated exclusively on funerary sculpture: he won the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Exposition Universelle in 1900. Funerary sculpture was very fashionable and his masterpiece is considered to be the Monument aux Morts in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
104.Alexis Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894), composer, befriended by Manet, Berthe Morisot, Verlaine and Fauré.
105.Henry Lerolle (1848–1921), a painter who formed a bridge between the tradi-tionalists and the ‘Indépendants’, with friends among both groups. He is known for his murals in the Sorbonne and in the church of St-Martin-des-Champs, Paris. His daughter Yvonne was a close friend of Julie Manet and her cousins and married Eugène Rouart, the brother of Julie’s future husband.
106.Paul César Helleu (1859–1927), painter, pupil of Gérôme, who specialized in portraits of the elegant women of the belle époque.
107.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 29.100.52.
108.Mézy-sur-Seine is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region near Juziers.
109.Le Château du Mesnil, near Juziers.
110.Adolphe Pontillon (1832–1894), Edma’s husband and Berthe’s brother-in-law.
111.Blanche Pontillon (1871–1941), Julie’s first cousin.
112.Edme Pontillon (b. 1878), was Blanche Pontillon’s brother and Julie’s first cousin.
113.La mer (The Sea), first published in 1861, is a work that is part scientific popularization, part history, part travelogue, part prose poem and part autobiography. Written by Jules Michelet (1798–1874), who Gustave Flaubert dubbed the only French Romantic.
114.Jean Renoir (1894–1979), the great film director.
115.Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, inv. 1028.
116.Octave Thomas (born in 1825), Julie’s uncle on her grandmother’s side.
117.Gabriel Thomas, his son and Julie’s cousin.
118.Alexander III of Russia (1845–1893).
119.Gaston-Alexandre Camentron (1862–1919), art dealer, at 43 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement. Initially an employee of Hector Brame, he was mainly associated with the Impressionists.
120.National Gallery, London, inv. NG 3294.
121.Rumour always had it that Léon Koelin-Leenhoff (1852–1927), a musician, publisher and stockbroker, may have been the illegitimate son of Edouard Manet and Suzanne Leenhoff. He lived as Suzanne’s young brother during the artist’s lifetime. Manet did not recognize him, even after the couple’s marriage in 1863, and did not make him his sole heir. Léon always called Manet parrain or godfather. Some historians believe that Léon could have been the illegitimate son not of Edouard but of Auguste, his father.
122.Alphonse Portier started as a simple purveyor of paints and artists’ materials, then became an art dealer at 54 rue Lepic, and was one of the first supporters of the Impressionists.
123.This could be Anna Jammes, née Bellot (1841–1934), mother of the poet Francis Jammes (1868–1938).
124.The Church of Saint-Séverin is a Roman Catholic church in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and is one of the oldest churches that remains standing on the Left Bank.
125.Berthe Renault was the daughter of Léon Renault (1839–1933), lawyer and moderate Republican Member of Parliament. She married another lawyer, Joseph Surcouf, on 1 July 1903.
126.The Comédie Française, or ‘le Français’ as it is known, was founded by King Louis XIV in 1680. Since 1799 it has been located in the Palais-Royal complex in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. It is the only state theatre to have its own troupe of actors, who are divided into ‘sociétaires’ and ‘pensionnaires’.
127.One-act comedy by Madame Émile de Girardin (1804–1855), written in 1854.
128.Edmond Got (1822–1901), an actor who had been made the 268th ‘Sociétaire’ in 1850.
129.A play by Alfred de Musset (1810–1857), written in 1836.
130.Suzanne Reichenberg (1853–1924), who married the Baron de Bourgoing in 1900.
131.1873, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, inv. 2423.
132.The street renamed ‘rue Paul Valery’ in 1945, between the avenue Victor Hugo and the avenue Foch, where Berthe Morisot and her husband bought land, on which they built a six-storey immeuble de rapport comprising several flats which could be rented out and bring in income.
133.The Prince de Joinville was the title given to the third son of King Louis Philippe of France (1773–1850). However, there is no trace of any divorce in the family, so we do not know who this Mademoiselle de Joinville is, unless one of the prince’s numerous mistresses used the name erroneously.
134.Annette Poulard (1851–1931), called ‘la Mère Poulard’, was a cook famous on the Mont Saint-Michel who in 1888 opened an inn where her speciality was (and still is!) a soufflé-omelette.
135.Julie, Jeannie and Paule.
136.A small harbour and village at Riec-sur-Bélon where the Morisots spent some time in 1867.
137.Jules-Élie Delaunay (1828–1891) was a French academic painter, born in Nantes, who studied with Flandrin, and at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris with Lamothe. He worked in the manner of Ingres until, after winning the Prix de Rome, he went to Italy in 1856 and abandoned the ideal of Raphael’s perfection for the severity of the quattrocentists. After his return from Rome, he obtained many important commissions for decorative paintings, including the Paris Opera.
138.Catulle Mendès (1841–1909), poet and disciple of Théophile Gautier and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, a Germanophile and ardent admirer of Wagner. A founder member of the Parnassian school of poetry, he wrote many lyrics for operas and operettas, especially for Chabrier.
139.The rue de Trévise and the cîté de Trévise are a residential street and square in the 9th arrondissement of Paris built in 1840 and inhabited by many artists.
140.Aline Renoir, née Charigot (1859–1915), a modest seamstress from Essoyes, met Renoir in 1875. They lived together after 1883, only marrying in 1890, five years after the birth of their son Pierre. Their second son, Jean, was born in 1894, and their third, Claude, known as Coco, in 1901.
141.Narcisse Diaz de la Peña (1807–1876), painter born in Bordeaux to Spanish parents, but, following their early deaths, raised by a Protestant minister near Paris. In 1821, he worked in the same porcelain factory as Jules-Louis Dupré, with whom he became a lifelong friend. He met Théodore Rousseau in 1831 and started painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
142.The Forest of Fontainebleau, to the south of Paris, where Corot and his pupils came to paint in the open air in the 1850s and 1860s. The picturesque village of Barbizon nearby gave its name to the school of landscape painters, which included Théodore Rousseau, François Daubigny, Jules Dupré and Diaz de la Peña. These artists were to have a direct influence on the Impressionists.
143.Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867), painter born in Paris into a well-to-do family. After a business training, he soon turned to painting, against his father’s wishes. Rousseau’s painting was not popular with the salon organizers or the critics of the time. He settled in Barbizon in 1848 but was besieged by misfortune: his wife was declared insane, his father lost his fortune and Rousseau was troubled by ill health. In November 1867 his condition worsened, and he died in the presence of his lifelong friend, Jean-François Millet.
144.Jean-Baptiste Corot (1796–1875), the major French landscape artist of the first half of the nineteenth century, He studied with the neoclassical painters Michallon and Bertin. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously looks back to the neoclassical tradition and anticipates the plein air innovations of Impressionism. He advised and helped many young artists, among them Berthe Morisot.
145.L’Almanach Hachette, or the Petite encyclopédie populaire de la Vie pratique, was first published in 1894. It contained all sorts of practical information, historical titbits, medical advice, recipes and gardening tips, as well as fanciful predictions on the weather and even the planet’s future.
146.Degas didn’t take up his new ‘passion’, photography, until he was 61. Daniel Halévy, the young son of his old friends Ludovic and Louise Halévy, introduced him to the ins and outs of the medium, prompting the artist to acquire a camera that required glass plates and a tripod. In a burst of creative energy that lasted less than five years, he made a body of photographs, of which fewer than 50 survive. Exactly why Degas suddenly used photography remains mysterious. Of course, the medium interested all the younger generation of his artist friends such as Walter Sickert and Jacques-Émile Blanche. Degas, who was always interested in new techniques and tools, would have automatically been curious, but one can also imagine that photography provided him with a new pair of eyes during the period when his eyesight was failing.
147.Zoë Closier, Degas’s last housekeeper, about whom we know very little, was renowned for her poor cooking; she complained constantly that Monsieur Degas preferred to spend money on an Ingres drawing rather than give her a proper housekeeping allowance. She was invaluable to him in many ways: reading to him, running errands and, especially, deterring unwanted visitors.
148.Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898), a leading Symbolist muralist and painter in the classical tradition, friend of Degas and the Impressionists, who frequently visited Berthe Morisot and attended her soirées.
149.Federico Zandomeneghi (1841–1917), Italian painter, born in Venice into a family of sculptors. Fought under Garibaldi before moving to Paris in 1874. He exhibited with the Impressionists.
150.Durand-Ruel Gallery: the Durand-Ruel family had developed their modest stationery business on the Left Bank to become fashionable art dealers on the rue de la Paix, exhibiting Delacroix, Corot, Daumier and the Barbizon painters. Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922), son of the founder, took over the business in 1865 and expanded to even larger premises in the rue Laffitte and the rue Le Peletier near Garnier’s new Opera House. In 1924, it finally settled in the avenue de Friedland. In 1870, because of the Franco-Prussian War, Durand-Ruel moved his stock to a gallery in London at 168 New Bond Street, where he exhibited not only Manet and Degas but also Monet and Pissarro, both in exile there at that time. By the 1890s, Durand-Ruel had shown most of the major Impressionists and was therefore a natural choice for the Berthe Morisot retrospective in 1896.
151.Femme au chapeau blanc, private collection.
152.Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, inv. RF 1960 18.
153.Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan.
154.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 4507.
155.Glasgow Museums, accession no. 35.308.
156.Joseph-Albert Glatigny (1839–1873), comedian, actor, journalist and dramatist, as well as poet. As a teenager he undertook an apprenticeship at a printer’s at Pont-Audemer but then joined a travelling company of actors as a prompter. Inspired by Théodore de Banville, he published at 18 his Vignes folles (Mad Vines, 1857), which he dedicated to his ‘beloved master’. In Paris he perfected an act in cafés and bars in which he improvised poems on rhymes suggested by the audience. Constantly on the road, still turning out plays and occasionally acting, he left a scattering of improvisations and occasional verse in small provincial newspapers. His exhausting bohemian lifestyle led to an early death.
157.Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (1837–1917), painter, influenced by Spanish Art and Velásquez in particular. He was an important teacher and fashionable portraitist.
158.Zacharie Astruc (1833–1907), poet, painter, sculptor, critic, and one of the earliest collectors of Japanese art in Paris, who participated in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 but also in the Exposition Universelle of 1900. As an art critic, writing between 1859 and 1872, he was a strong defender of Courbet, and was one of the first to recognize the talent of Manet. He also defended Monet, Whistler, Carolus-Duran, Fantin-Latour and Alphonse Legros. He appears in the famous painting of Henri Fantin-Latour, Un atelier aux Batignolles, where he is seated next to Manet, who is shown painting his portrait.
159.Whereabouts unknown.
160.Ambroise Vollard (1868–1939), the Creole art dealer born in Saint Denis, Ile de la Réunion, who had premises in the rue Laffitte, where he exhibited avant-garde artists.
161.Paul Cézanne, Galerie Vollard, Paris, November–December 1895. No catalogue was issued, although there were approximately 150 pictures exhibited on a rotating basis.
162.Le Meurtre dans la ravine, private collection.
163.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1998.30.
164.Marie-Cornélie Morisot, née Thomas (1819–1876).
165.Dido Freire (1907–1990) was a Brazilian script girl and cinema technician who was Jean Renoir’s last wife.
166.Jean Renoir, Renoir, Hachette, Paris, 1962.
167.To prepare for the Berthe Morisot memorial exhibition.
168.Private collection.
169.Alexander I (1876–11 June 1903) was King of Serbia from 1889 to 1903. His father King Milan, whom Degas was invited to meet, unexpectedly abdicated in 1889, proclaiming Alexander, then just 12, King under the regency of his mother, Queen Natalie, until he reached 18. In May 1894, King Alexander seized the throne, dismissed the regent and arbitrarily abolished King Milan’s liberal constitution of 1888. Alexander I and his wife, Queen Draga, were both assassinated by a group of army officers led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijevic in 1903.
170.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, Michel Monet bequest, inv. 5039.
171.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, Michel Monet bequest, inv. 5027.
172.Alice Hoschedé-Monet (1844–1911) and Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (1867–1947).
173.After a lingering illness, Suzanne Hoschedé-Butler (1864–1899), Monet’s stepdaughter, died on 6 September 1899.
174.Arsène Alexandre (1859–1937), art critic and defender of Toulouse-Lautrec. He was a contributor to L’Événement, Le Paris and L’Éclair and, in 1894, was one of the founders of the satirical journal Le Rire, becoming its artistic director. He was later art critic for Le Figaro. Alexandre and Félix Fénéon were the first to use the term pointillism, in 1886.
175.Gustave Geffroy (1855–1926), a French journalist, art critic, historian and novelist. He was one of the ten founding members of the literary organization Académie Goncourt in 1900. He is noted as one of the earliest historians of the Impressionist art movement. He knew and championed Monet, whom he met in 1886 in Belle-Île-en-Mer. Monet introduced him to Cézanne, who painted his portrait in 1895. He contributed to the newspaper La Justice from 1880, and was a friend of its founder, Georges Clemenceau, who in 1908 appointed him director of the Gobelins tapestry factory, a position he held until his death.
176.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6020.
177.Private collection.
178.Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, PPP 00746.
179.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1681.
180.Private collection.
181.Private collection.
182.Private collection.
183.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6012.
184.Private collection.
185.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6013.
186.Private collection.
187.Private collection.
188.Private collection.
189.Private collection.
190.Location unknown.
191.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6018.
192.Private collection.
193.Private collection.
194.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 4020.
195.Eugène Donop de Monchy (1854–1942) and his wife Victorine Donop de Monchy (c. 1870–1958), née de Bellio. Her Romanian father Georges de Bellio (1828–1894), an art collector, was the homeopathic doctor who treated all the Impressionists.
196.Private collection.
197.Private collection.
198.Private collection.
199.Private collection.
200.Location unknown.
201.NY Carslberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
202.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 5262.
203.Private collection.
204.Private collection.
205.Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, inv. 1974.21.2.
206.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6005.
207.National Gallery, Washington, inv. 1963.10.85.
208.National Gallery, Washington, inv. 1970.17.48.
209.Private collection.
210.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 2849.
211.Private collection.
212.Private collection.
213.Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, inv. 1981.129.
214.Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, inv. M.1979.21.P.
215.Private collection.
216.Probably, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, inv. 1974.28.
217.Private collection.
218.Private collection.
219.Private collection.
220.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6020.
221.Private collection.
222.There were two versions of Le Cerisier in oil and one in watercolour in the exhibition, as well as preparatory works.
223.Private collection.
224.Private collection.
225.Private collection.
226.Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, B 814.
227.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6028.
228.Private collection.
229.Collection Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny.
230.Private collection.
231.Private collection.
232.Private collection.
233.The Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1999.363.
234.Private collection.
235.Private collection.
236.Private collection.
237.Private collection.
238.Private collection.
239.Private collection.
240.Private collection.
241.Private collection.
242.Private collection.
243.Private collection.
244.Private collection.
245.Private collection.
246.Private collection.
247.Private collection.
248.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6021.
249.Private collection.
250.National Gallery, Oslo, Norway, inv. N.G.M. 01544.
251.Private collection.
252.Private collection.
253.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1969 22.
254.Private collection.
255.Private collection.
256.Private collection.
257.National Gallery, London, inv. 701079.
258.Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, inv. 1974.28.
259.Private collection.
260.Private collection
261.Private collection.
262.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6022.
263.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 5027.
264.Private collection.
265.Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, Denmark.
266.Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, inv. 6002.
267.Jeanne Gobillard.
268.Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, Denmark.
269.Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, inv. PPP 00488.
270.Private collection.
271.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 2268.
272.Private collection.
273.Private collection.
274.Private collection.
275.Private collection.
276.Museum of Art, Philadelphia, inv. 1991-180-1.
277.Private collection.
278.Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Portrait de Famille, Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Mans, inv. LM10.288.
279.Thadée Natanson (1868–1951), publisher and editor of La Revue Blanche; he and his wife Misia were influential members of Parisian society and frequented all the artistic and intellectual circles of Paris. Elémir Bourges (1852–1925) and Anna Braunerova (b.1856).
280.Maria Zofia Olga Zenajda Godebska, known as Misia (1872–1950), in Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, Russia. Her father, Cyprian Godebski, was a renowned Polish sculptor and professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. In 1893 she married her 20-year-old cousin Thadée Natanson, a Polish émigré.
281.Their banker.
282.In official processions since the beginning of the presidency of Sadi Carnot in 1887, a rider in white breeches and gloves rode 12 paces in front of the president’s landau. Montjaret first occupied the post of piqueur at the Elysée Palace in 1894.
283.Thomas.
284.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, inv. B. 624.
285.Private collection.
286.Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947), Mallarmé’s most ardent disciple; friend of André Gide and Paul Valéry. Before he reached 19 years of age, Fargue had already published in L’Art littéraire in 1894 and his important poem ‘Tancrède’ appeared in the magazine Pan in 1895. As an opponent of the surrealists, he became a member of the Symbolist poetry circle connected with Le Mercure de France. Rilke, Joyce and others declared that Fargue was at the very forefront of modern poetry.
287.Emmanuel de Vaissière (1823–1911) was married to Marie-Amélie Fournier, who was a cousin of the Manet brothers’ mother. Their daughter is Julie de Vaissière.
288.A medieval château in the Touraine which was the property of the Grognet de Vassé family from the middle of the thirteenth century until the Revolution. It was then owned by Laurent Casimir Fournier, a Member of Parliament, before he sold it to Monsieur de Vaissière.
289.Against Nature, a ‘decadent’ novel which caused a sensation when it was published in 1884.
290.A family of porcelain dealers and manufacturers, founded by the American Quaker David Haviland (1814–1879) in 1842. He established his first factory in the Berry but moved to Limoges, where he could find plentiful kaolin. After the Franco-Prussian War, his son Charles-Edouard Haviland (1839–1921), through shrewd management, made the Haviland factory into the largest and most modern porcelain factory in France, employing more than 2,500 people in 1905. He employed artists such as Felix Bracquemond and collected avant-garde art, advised by his father-in-law Philippe Burty (1830–1890), who was a critic and an avid collector.
291.In 1896 at the age of 51, Renoir purchased his country house in Essoyes in the Champagne-Ardenne area of France, to the east of Paris, where his wife Aline was born. He spent every summer there and built himself two studios in the grounds. He and his wife and children are all buried in the churchyard of the village.
292.For Marie Bashkirtseff, see note 80. Her naturalist paintings must have seemed appalling to the daughter of Berthe Morisot!
293.We know little about ‘Miss Vos’ to whom Julie writes, other than the fact she is English, although her name sounds of Dutch origin, and that she was probably Jewish. She appears extensively in 1897 and may have been a governess to the Manet family at some time.
294.In January 1871, Renoir was posted to Libourne, where he suffered a severe attack of dysentery. He then went from Bordeaux, where he was treated, to Vic-en-Bigorre near Tarbes, where he was demobilized on 10 March. We do not know where this château to which he refers could have been but the stay probably took place during his convalescence.
295.Alfred Sisley (1839–1899) was the only English Impressionist who was born and spent most of his life in France. Sisley is recognized as perhaps the most consistent of the Impressionists, never deviating into figure painting or finding that the movement did not fulfil his artistic needs. Sisley was born in Paris to affluent English parents and studied with Gleyre at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he met Bazille, Renoir and Monet. He exhibited at all the Impressionist exhibitions but he was the only Impressionist never to experience commercial success during his lifetime and he died in poverty.
296.Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), painter of Portuguese-Jewish-Creole descent. He studied under Corot and was a fellow Impressionist and friend of Monet and Renoir. Pissarro showed his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. When Pissarro returned from England to his home in France after the Franco-German War, he discovered that of the 1,500 paintings he had done over 20 years, which he was forced to leave behind when he moved to London, only 40 remained. By the 1880s, Pissarro began to explore new themes and methods of painting to break out of the Impressionist mould. He subsequently worked with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
297.Thadée Natanson (see note 279) became involved in political causes, champion-ing the ideals of socialism, and was a fervent ‘Dreyfusard’.
298.Félix Fénéon (1861–1944) was a Parisian anarchist and art critic. He coined the term ‘neo-Impressionism’ in 1886 to identify a group of artists led by Georges Seurat, and ardently promoted them.
299.Jules Abel Faivre (1867–1945), belle époque painter turned caricaturist who worked for a time with Renoir but attained fame by illustrating such periodicals as L’Assiette au Beurre and Le Rire.
300.Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 140.
301.Jeanne Baudot (1877–1957), a doctor’s daughter, who became an accomplished painter under the guidance of Renoir. She settled in Louveciennes when still in her twenties and remained a close friend of Julie Manet, often visiting her at the Château du Mesnil.
302.James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was an important American-born, British-based painter and printmaker during the American Gilded Age. Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler entitled many of his paintings ‘arrangements’, ‘harmonies’ and ‘nocturnes’, emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. Whistler arrived in Paris in 1855, quickly adopted the life of a bohemian artist and met Courbet, Manet, Carolus-Duran and Degas. He moved to London while often visiting Paris, inspiring both the Symbolist and Aesthetic movements. Because of his combative and litigious nature, he made many enemies among clients and dealers but was nevertheless admired by the greatest artists of his day.
303.Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), was an Italian Renaissance painter.
304.Private collection.
305.Musée Renoir, Cagnes-sur-Mer, MNR 198, and Asahi Beer Co. Ltd, Japan.
306.Orchestra founded by Charles Lamoureux (1834–1899), who was a Wagner enthusiast and who was the first musician to conduct the Ring Cycle in France.
307.Titian, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 743.
308.The Théâtre de l’Odéon is in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the Left Bank of the Seine, next to the Luxembourg Gardens. It was originally built between 1779 and 1782, in the garden of the former Hôtel de Condé, to a neoclassical design by Charles de Wailly and Marie-Joseph Peyre. The Odéon was originally intended to house the Comédie Française, which, however, preferred to stay at the Théâtre-Français in the Palais Royal. It burnt down several times. The third and present structure was opened in September 1819.
309.A famous music hall, in Paris, established in 1869, which was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s or belle époque until the 1920s or Années folles, presenting artists like Mistinguett.
310.Loïe Fuller (1862–1928), American dancer at the Folies Bergère, who was painted by Toulouse-Lautrec and Jean-Louis Forain. She was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.
311.Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 3824.
312.Fashionable church in the 8th arrondissement of Paris on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré frequented by the haute bourgeoisie of Paris.
313.Théodore de Wyzewa; see note 82.
314.French painter (1602–1674), who was a founding member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture and worked for Cardinal Richelieu, for whom he decorated the Palais Cardinal and the dome of the Sorbonne. Later in life, from 1640 onwards, he came under the influence of Jansenism. After his paralysed daughter was allegedly miraculously cured at the nunnery of Port-Royal, he painted the celebrated painting Ex-Voto de 1662, now in the Louvre, which represents the veiled artist’s daughter with the Mother Superior.
315.Ernest Rouart (1874–1942), future husband of Julie Manet, studied painting with Degas.
316.Octave Thomas, brother of Berthe Morisot’s mother.
317.Jean-Jacques Henner (1829–1905) was an Alsatian painter, who from 1848 studied with Michel Martin Drolling and François-Édouard Picot at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1858. From 1874 to 1889, with Carolus-Duran, he ran what he called ‘l’atelier des Dames’ for women who could not study at the École des Beaux-Arts at that time. He was especially known for his use of sfumato when painting redhead nudes with milky complexions.
318.Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), a French army officer and a Jew, was condemned by military secret tribunal in 1894, on a false charge of divulging secrets to the German government, to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, French Guiana. A sensational new trial in 1899 again found him guilty but the sentence was reduced to ten years. Later that same year, Dreyfus accepted a clemency offer by President Émile Loubet. But it was not until 1906, when anti-Semitism had died down somewhat, that the verdict was reversed and Dreyfus was entirely exonerated and reinstated in the army. The Affair was a political scandal that divided France until it was finally resolved in 1906, and remains one of the most striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice, where a major role was played by the press and public opinion.
319.Fernand de Rodays (1845–1925), or, as Julie mistakenly calls him, Ferdinand Roday, director and, from 1879 and 1894, editor-in-chief with Francis Magnan of Le Figaro newspaper, who was persuaded that Captain Dreyfus was innocent and published numerous articles about the Affair.
320.The Théâtre des Variétés opened in 1809 at 7 boulevard Montmartre in the 2nd arrondissement. It is one of the oldest theatres in Paris still in use.
321.Portrait au chapeau, which represents Mademoiselle Amélie Dieterle (1871–1941), star at the Théatre des Variétés and muse of Mallarmé, private collection.
322.La loge aux variétés, private collection.
323.Dr Thomas Wiltberger Evans outlived his beloved wife by just a few months and died on 14 November 1897. Childless, he left his fortune to his hometown Philadelphia’s university, instructing them to set up ‘The Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute’ as well as cast the statue that so amused Renoir. However, after his nephew unsuccessfully contested his will in court, the whole project was delayed until 1915.
324.The girls’ maid.
325.The original mill, built in 1622 on Montmartre, was turned into a guinguette after 1814. The term galette denotes a small loaf of bread that the Debray millers, owners of the mill in the nineteenth century, made and sold with a glass of milk. In 1830, milk was replaced with the local Montmartre wine. The windmill became first a cabaret, then in 1833 a dance hall. Parisians flocked to Montmartre to enjoy the simple pleasures of what was still the countryside. Émile Zola wrote in 1876, ‘We rushed off into the countryside to celebrate the joy of not having to listen to any more talk about politics’: i.e. endless discussions about France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1876, Renoir painted his celebrated Bal du Moulin de la Galette (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 2739).
326.Private collection.
327.Private collection.
328.Pinakoteca Agnelli, Turin.
329.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1967 4.
330.Paysanne à la chemise blanche et au bonnet jaune (in Catalogue raisonné by Robaut Nelaton, Paris, vol. II, p. 150, no. 414) sold for 300 francs to Mr Perrot at the ‘Collection de Henri Rouart’, his estate sale by Manzi-Joyant in Paris, 9, 10 and 11 December 1912, lot 139 (private collection, Japan).
331.National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, inv. 2001.23.1.
332.Sold at the sale ‘Collection de Henri Rouart’, Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 9, 10 and 11 December 1912, lot 180, for 55,000 francs to Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, California, inv. F1983.06.P.
333.Michel Manzi (1849–1915) was always interested in printing processes: in 1882, he started working for Goupil & Cie, and between 1885 and 1897 he perfected aquatint photogravure and typogravure. In 1897, he started ‘Jean Boussod, Manzi, Joyant & Cie’, which in 1900 became ‘Manzi, Joyant & Cie’. His friendships with all the Impressionists, especially with Degas, were in great part responsible for the venerable firm of Goupil’s ventures into modern art. His passion for art, literature and theatre was voracious and he owned a large private collection.
334.Cavalière au bois de Boulogne, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
335.La Leçon de guitare, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA, 69.1123.
336.Sur la plage, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1953 24.
337.Sur la terrasse (1874), Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo.
338.Charles Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894) played a leading role in the Parnassian poetic movement, sharing many of the values of other poets of this generation, bridging the Romantic and Symbolist periods.
339.Anne Rose Suzanne Louviot or Méry Laurent (1849–1900), the daughter of a laundress, came to Paris at 16 and made a name for herself as a demi-mondaine, who posed for Manet at the very end of his life. She started as a comic actress at the Théatre des Varietés but soon, because of her special friendships with all the most famous artists and poets of the belle époque, held a fashionable ‘salon’. Among her many wealthy lovers was Dr Evans, and among the much poorer, Mallarmé.
340.Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859) was a French actress and poet.
341.The poet Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925) had launched the review La Conque, and in 1892 Astarté, a short collection of 25 poems, appeared in L’Art Indépendant. In the same year, he came into his share of his father’s estate, which freed him from financial worry for a few years, but he unfortunately acquired the habits of a man of independent means, without the funds to sustain his extravagant lifestyle. Henri de Régnier and Louÿs both courted the poet José Maria de Heredia’s two daughters, Louise and Marie. Pierre Louÿs was already desperately in love with the very pretty Marie, a brilliant woman of letters. She would, however, marry the wealthy Henri de Régnier in 1895 to please her father, but she became Louÿs’s lover in 1897. Louÿs then married Louise in 1899, and divorced her in 1913.
342.La Musique aux Tuileries, National Gallery, London, NG 3260.
343.Maître Fernand Labori (1860–1917), famous and colourful barrister and political figure, whom Zola chose to defend him because he had defended Madame Dreyfus in her case against Esterhazy earlier in 1898.
344.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 29.100.54.
345.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 29.100.53.
346.Victorine Meurent (1844–1927), French painter and model, born in Paris to a family of simple artisans, who started modelling at the age of 16 in the studio of Thomas Couture and also posed for Alfred Stevens, but she is best known as the favourite model of Edouard Manet, for whom she first posed in 1862, for his painting The Street Singer. She was particularly noticeable for her petite stature, which earned her the nickname ‘La Crevette’ (the Shrimp) and for her red hair.
347.Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim.
348.J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 89.PA.71.
349.Georges d’Espagnat (1870–1950), a French post-Impressionist painter who, although he started off in 1888 at the École des Beaux-Arts and Arts Décoratifs, was largely self-taught. He travelled to Morrocco in 1898 and extensively around Europe from 1905 to 1910. He was very prolific and exhibited frequently at Durand-Ruel but also at Bernheim-Jeune and Druet. He painted Paul Valery’s portrait in 1910.
350.Georges Gustave Goupy (1844–1896), collector. The sale took place at the Hôtel Drouot on 30 March 1898 in room 6.
351.The full title of this painting is The Battle of the U.S.S. ‘Kearsarge’ and the C.S.S. ‘Alabama’, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, accession number cat. 1027.
352.Sophie Canat was a dear friend of Berthe Morisot’s to whom she wrote regularly, but we have been unable to find any other details about her.
353.This accident happened on 2 June, while Helleu was in fact visiting the painter Jean-François Rafaëlli, not at the Monet exhibition. The death of his baby daughter Alice was a terrible tragedy for his wife, who never quite got over the loss, although the arrival of Paulette in 1904 was a consolation.
354.The Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts at the Champ-de-Mars, created in 1862 and presided over by the writer Théophile Gautier, with Jean-François Millet as vice president, and committee members including Eugène Delacroix, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and exhibitors Léon Bonnat, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Charles-François Daubigny, Laura Fredducci, Gustave Doré and Édouard Manet. In 1864, the Société organized a retrospective of Delacroix’s works a year after his death, then stopped its activities until 1890, when it began organizing annual exhibitions again at the Salon du Champ de Mars with Ernest Meissonier as president and a committee including Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus-Duran, Félix Bracquemond, Jules Dalou and Auguste Rodin.
355.Louis Anquetin (1861–1932), painter who came to Paris 1882 and studied in Léon Bonnat’s studio, where he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The two artists later moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon, where they befriended Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. Around 1887, Anquetin and Bernard developed a painting style that used flat regions of colour and thick, black contour outlines. This style, named Cloisonnism by critic Edouard Dujardin, was inspired by both stained glass and Japanese ukiyo-e.
356.The controversial monument dedicated to the writer Honoré de Balzac, although commissioned in 1890, took Rodin seven years to complete.
357.Renoir was indeed one of the first admirers of the operas of Wagner (1813– 1883) in France. At the beginning of 1882, when the painter was travelling in the South of Italy, he stopped in Palermo where Wagner was staying. After two fruitless attempts, Renoir was finally introduced to the maestro, who the day before had put the final notes to Parsifal. Renoir proposed a short sitting for the following day, when he painted the portrait, now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Renoir also went to Bayreuth on several occasions.
358.Charles Lamoureux (1834–1899) was a Wagner enthusiast and was the first musician to conduct the Ring Cycle in France.
359.Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931), French composer and teacher, who created the music academy Schola Cantorum in 1894.
360.Phillips Collection, Washington DC.
361.Danse à la campagne and Danse à la ville, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1979 64 and RF 1978 13.
362.Known as La première sortie, National Gallery, London, inv. NG 3859.
363.A salon that took place every year after 1884 for artists who did not want to be part of any particular movement or school. The founder members were Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet and Charles Angrand.
364.The ‘other’ official Salon, which until 1882 was organized by the Academy, then by the Société des artistes français.
365.Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1979 64 and RF 1978 13.
366.Charles Lauth (1836–1913), French chemist and director of the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres porcelain factory from 1879 to 1887, then of the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris until 1904.
367.Private collection.
368.Of very ancient origin, probably dating back to the conversion of the country by the Celtic monks, ‘processions’ or ‘pardons’ were typically Breton forms of pilgrimage and one of the most traditional demonstrations of popular Catholicism in Brittany, A penitential ceremony that usually occurs on the feast of the patron saint of a church or chapel, it involves the local inhabitants, who dress in their elaborate traditional Breton costume.
369.Anatole Mallarmé (1871–1879).
370.Henry Roujon (1853–1914), French academic, essayist and novelist, who was the secretary of Jules Ferry, and later director of Fine Arts in 1894, of which he was named secretary for life of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1903, and was an elected member of the Académie française in 1911.
371.The Journal of the painter Eugène Delacroix (1822–1863), first published by Plon in 1893, is one of the great documents in art history, a work of literature as well as a vital documentary source for scholars and students. In it, the artist discusses his own paintings, his life, his sorrows and hopes; the paintings and sculptures of Rubens, Michelangelo, Constable, Bonington and others; old and new literature and the music of Mozart, Rossini and Chopin; the events of his time.
372.Georges Rodenbach (1855–1898), Symbolist poet of Belgian origins and great friend of Mallarmé.
373.Armand Sylvestre (1837–1901), writer, librettist and critic.
374.In September and October, the navvies and construction workers went on strike, causing major disruption to Paris, followed by the transport workers. This first attempt at a general strike by the trade unions proved a failure mainly because of clever infiltration by the police intelligence services.
375.Eugène Rouart (1872–1936), elder brother of Ernest, who was to marry Julie in 1900. An agronomist who also wrote novels, Eugène had a political career, ending up a senator in 1933. He started a lifelong relationship with André Gide in 1893; their correspondence was published in 2006. His homosexual leanings had obvious repercussions on his marriage to Yvonne Lerolle (1877–1944) but they nevertheless would have two sons, Stanislas (1903–1980) and Olivier (1906–2001).
376.Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 314.
377.Georges Lafenestre (1837–1919), La peinture italienne’, vol. I, Alcide Picard, Paris, 1886.
378.Georges Durand-Ruel (1866–1931).
379.Paul Bérard (1833–1905), a wealthy banker who had met Renoir in 1878 through a mutual friend, Charles Deudon, at the fashionable salon of another of Renoir’s clients, Madame Charpentier, and became his most important patron. Bérard had a château, a few kilometres from Dieppe, the Château de Wargemont, where Renoir often stayed.
380.Comte Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam; see note 62.
381.Marie Dantine, the illiterate widow of a Belgian coachman. In 1881, she gave birth to Villiers’ son Victor (nicknamed ‘Totor’).
382.The Fashoda Incident was the climax of imperial territorial disputes between Britain and France in Eastern Africa. A French expedition to Fashoda on the White Nile sought to gain control of the Upper Nile river basin and thereby exclude Britain from the Sudan. The two armies met on friendly terms, but back in Europe it became a war scare. The British held firm as both nations stood on the verge of war, with heated rhetoric on both sides. Under heavy pressure, the French withdrew, securing Anglo-Egyptian control over the area. The status quo was recognized by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco. However, anti-British feeling remained strong for some time. Fashoda was renamed Kodok in 1904.
383.Marie Cantacuzène (1820–1898) was born a Romanian princess from Moldavia, who eventually married the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes in 1898, although they had been lovers since 1856 when they met in Chassériau’s studio. Puvis died on 24 October 1898, less than three months after his wife’s demise.
384.Georgette Leblanc (1869–1941), actress and singer, who specialized in Lieder. She was Mauclair’s lover before becoming the mistress of Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949).
385.National Gallery, London, inv. NG 3291.
386.Convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart (1854–1914) played an important role in attempting to prove Esterhazy’s guilt by collecting vital evidence. Dismissed from the army and put in prison, he was reinstated on the same day as Dreyfus in 1906.
387.We know little about the painter Paul Roudier other than the fact that he was a close school friend of Manet’s, for whom he posed, for instance, with the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens in Manet’s painting of 1873 Le croquet (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main).
388.This is probably Fruits et fleurs (whereabouts unknown), bought by Degas from Brame fils on 26 December 1898. In a handwritten note about his Delacroix paintings, Degas wrote: ‘I don’t know why it took so long to rise to the bait when it came to this painting. Rouart declared he would only buy it if I didn’t and was pushing me into it. In the end, he gave up and I bought it for 1600 f. Once I got it home, I realized it was remarkable, that I hadn’t really looked at it properly and that Old Rouart had done me a real favour. Brame could have sold it for a lot more, so he had done me one as well’! (‘Je ne sais pourquoi je ne me mordais pas à ce tableau, Rouart ne voulait le prendre que si je n’en voulais pas et il faisait tout ce qu’il pouvait pour me pousser dessus. Enfin comme il y renonça définitivement pour lui, je l’achetai 1600f, et, une fois chez moi, je me rendis compte qu’il est admirable, que je n’y voyais goutte, et que le bon Rouart m’avait fait un fameux cadeau. Brame fils aurait pu le vendre beaucoup plus cher, lui aussi m’a fait cadeau.’).
389.This could be either the portrait of Jacques Marquet, Baron de Montbreton de Norvins, which Degas acquired from Haro for 7,700 francs on 3 June 1898 (now at the National Gallery, London, NG3291), or ‘La Victoire, étude pour l’Apothéose d’Homère (now at the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, inv. 1972–23), which he acquired in November 1898 for 800 francs, a work that had previously been owned by Gustave Moreau.
390.Auguste Pellerin (1853–1929) was a French entrepreneur and art collector. He was one of the most important collectors of the works of Edouard Manet and Paul Cézanne at the beginning of the twentieth century.
391.Neue Pinakothek, Munich.
392.Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
393.Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT, inv. 161.18.33.
394.Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Museum, Cambridge MA, inv. 1951.50.
395.The Courtauld Gallery, London.
396.Museu de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil.
397.Collection Émil G. Bührle, Zurich.
398.National Gallery, London, inv. NG 3259.
399.Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH, in. 1958.34.
400.Private collection.
401.Les lilas à Maurecourt (1874), private collection.
402.Private collection.
403.The Bernheim family were artist materials’ merchants, originally from Besan-çon, who became important art dealers, located from 1863 at 8 rue Lafitte, run by Joseph Bernheim (1799–1859). His son, Alexandre Bernheim (1839–1915), was a friend of Delacroix, Corot and Gustave Courbet. In 1874 he first showed Impressionists, and in 1906 moved to 25 boulevard de la Madeleine, then to 15 rue Richepanse. The gallery expanded thanks to Alexandre’s sons, Josse Bernheim-Jeune (1870–1941) and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune (1870–1953): they were the first to organize a Van Gogh exhibition in 1901 and presented Bonnard and Vuillard in 1906, Cézanne and Cross in 1907, Seurat and Van Dongen in 1908, Matisse in 1910, etc. They moved to their present location on the corner of avenue Matignon and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1925.
404.Museu de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil.
405.The painter died on 29 January 1899 in Moret-sur-Loing at the age of 59, a few months after the death of his wife.
406.Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, inv. RF 1960-19.
407.Raoul Pugno (1852–1914), French composer, teacher, organist and pianist, known for his playing of Mozart’s works, and Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931), Belgian violinist, composer and conductor.
408.Georges Adolphe Marie de Vaissière (1860–1939).
409.Jacques Drogue (1858–1901) appears many times in the diary, but very little is known about him other than the fact that he seems to have been an entertaining and amusing friend, and a minor printmaker and painter who was influenced by art nouveau.
410.Félix Faure (1841–1899), wealthy leather merchant from Le Havre who was elected President of the Third Republic by the moderate coalition in January 1895. He was in office during the period of most of Julie’s diary. He died of heart failure in the arms of his mistress, Marguerite Steinheil, at the Elysée Palace.
411.Julie’s cousin Edme Pontillon; see note 112.
412.Godefroy Cavaignac (1853–1905), son of a general and a diehard anti-Dreyfus politician, who had been minister of war and who opposed the retrial of Dreyfus. He nevertheless was a candidate in the presidential election of 1899.
413.Jules Méline (1838–1925), lawyer, a moderate right-wing politician who was also a candidate in the presidential election of 1899.
414.Émile Loubet (1838–1929) was the eighth president of France. As president (1899–1906), his term of office saw the successful Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the forging of the Entente with Great Britain.
415.The ‘Panama Affair’ was a serious corruption scandal in 1892, linked to the building of the Panama Canal. Close to a billion francs were lost when the French government took bribes to keep quiet about the Panama Canal Company’s financial troubles. In 1894, a second French company, the Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama (New Panama Canal Company), was created to manage the assets, and potentially finish construction. The new company sought a buyer for the assets, with an asking price of US$109 million. The construction of the canal was taken over by the United States, which bought out the lease, the shares and assets in the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty of November 1903, for US$40 million. Work resumed in 1904 and the canal opened on 3 August 1914.
416.L’Aurore was a literary, liberal and socialist newspaper published in Paris from 1897 to 1916. Its most famous headline was Émile Zola’s ‘J’Accuse’, leading into his article on the Dreyfus Affair. The newspaper was published by Georges Clemenceau, who later became the prime minister of France.
417.During Félix Faure’s funeral, on 23 February 1899, the politician Paul Déroulède lay in wait on the Place de la Bastille to intercept Général Roget and his troups returning from the ceremony in order to persuade him to stage a coup against the government. But in vain, because Déroulède was arrested on the spot before their arrival. He was tried but acquitted on 29 May.
418.Dreyfus.
419.Edmond Bonniot (1869–1930), Paul Valéry’s personal physician, who married Geneviève Mallarmé in 1901.
420.The Grands Boulevards of the Right Bank comprise the boulevards Beaumarchais, Filles-du-Calvaire, Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre, Italiens, Capucines and la Madeleine and were fashionable areas for theatregoers and nightlife during the belle époque.
421.Maurice Denis (1870–1943), important Symbolist and religious artist, friend of Gauguin and Sérusier, and founder member of the Nabis group.
422.Odilon Redon (1840–1916), Symbolist painter and engraver, known for his fantastic subjects.
423.Ernest Chausson (1855–1899) was a French romantic composer. From 1886 to his death, Chausson was secretary of the Salon National de Musique. He also assembled an important collection of paintings.
424.Léon Fauché (1868–1950) was a French painter who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants with Toulouse-Lautrec, Maxime Dethomas and Louis Anquetin, and who in 1901 organized the Salon des Refusés at the Pavillon des Arts Décoratifs. He also founded the association The Studio (L’Atelier) with Armand Point.
425.The caretaker of the Château du Mesnil.
426.Moret-sur-Loing, where Sisley lived, died and is buried.
427.Victor Desfossés (1835–1899) was a banker, stockbroker and art collector, who was a patron of Courbet. His posthumous estate sale was held in his hôtel particulier at 6 rue de Galilée in the 16th arrondissement in Paris on 26 April 1899.
428.Acquired by Degas from Bernheim Jeune, who had bought it at the sale as lot 28 for 16,800 francs and sold it on to him after the sale.
429.Camille Redon (1852–1923), née Falte, the artist Odilon Redon’s wife.
430.Germaine Hoschedé (1873–1968), youngest daughter of Alice and Ernest Hoschedé. In 1902 she married Albert Salerou, an army officer.
431.Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844–1926), the American painter and printmaker, born in Pennsylvania, who lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.
432.The Doria collection was sold by Georges Petit 4–9 May 1899.
433.Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA, inv. 1963-116-13.
434.Private collection. These panels were commissioned in 1879 by Blanche’s mother to decorate the dining room of the Blanches’ ‘chalet’ seaside home at Bas Fort Blanc in Dieppe.
435.Landscape, private collection.
436.Jacques-Émile Blanche owned Moine en prière (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA, inv. 35.67) and Une visite dans l’atelier de Velásquez (private collection).
437.The Burrell Collection, Glasgow City Council, inv. 35.246.
438.José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905), Cuban-born French poet; disciple of Leconte de Lisle and friend of Catulle Mendès. The poet Pierre Louÿs married his daughter Louise after having had a passionate love affair with her sister Marie.
439.Loubet, who was widely attacked for his left-wing and pro-Dreyfus views, was struck at the Auteuil steeplechase by an anti-Dreyfusard.
440.Jacques Cor was a critic and writer, who wrote on Wagner.
441.Translated by Marcel Schwob (1867–1905) and Eugène Morand (1853–1930) as La Tragique histoire d’Hamlet.
442.Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), French stage and early film actress. She was referred to as ‘the most famous actress the world has ever known’ and ‘the Divine Sarah’, and is regarded as one of the finest actors of all time. Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, at the beginning of the belle époque period, and was soon in demand all over Europe and America.
443.Forain and Caran d’Ache founded this right-wing, satirical anti-Dreyfus magazine, which was published from February 1898 to September 1899.
444.The violently anti-Dreyfus campaigner and nationalist judge Jules Quesnay de Beaurepaire (1834–1923).
445.Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934), president of France 1913–20 and several times prime minister. He refused to take sides in the Dreyfus Affair.
446.‘Tableaux, dessins et ameublement par suite du décès de Madame veuve Choquet’, Galerie Georges Petit, 1, 3, 4 July 1899.
447.National Gallery, London, inv. NG 6262.
448.Lot 52, Ovide en exil chez les Scythes by Eugène Delacroix.
449.Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Museum, Cambridge MA, inv. 1943.274.
450.Lot 46, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen.
451.The Camondos were a prominent family of Jewish financiers and philanthro-pists. Isaac de Camondo (1851–1911) was a discerning collector of Impressionist paintings.
452.National Museum Stockholm, inv. NMB 380; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX, inv. 98.278.
453.This is probably lot 134, Un cavalier mort, an unfinished watercolour of several figures, 22 × 32 cm. Jeanne Baudot claims that, at the end of the sale, the painter actually gave her this watercolour as a present (see her Renoir, ses amis, ses modéles, Éditions littéraires de France, Paris, 1949, p. 106).
454.Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), the American short-story writer and poet, was translated by Baudelaire (1856–65) and Mallarmé (1875).
455.Saint Germain-en-Laye, about 20 kilometres to the west of Paris.
456.Villa Montrouge, 3 rue de Fourqueux, Saint-Germain–en-Laye.
457.The Musée du Luxembourg was the first museum in France ever to be open to the public, in 1750, and became the first contemporary art museum in Paris in 1818.
458.Pierre-Henri Renoir (1830–1903) was an engraver on precious metal and a medallist of renown.
459.Spa town in the Alps specializing in treatments for rheumatism and arthritis.
460.Gabrielle Renard (1878–1959), often considered as Renoir’s muse, was employed as Jean Renoir’s nanny in 1894 and stayed with the Renoir household until the painter’s death.
461.This appears to be a typographical error, one of many in the original text.
462.A pretty château 70 km south-east of Paris, built in 1848, that first belonged to General Lafayette’s daughter, then to one of Napoleon III’s mistresses, Eléonore Vergeot, then bought in 1872 by Hubert Debrousse, wealthy industrialist and philanthropist.
463.A godson of Madame Clément.
464.Most probably Le Pont de Limay (1855–60), which Degas bought at the Goupy sale on 30 March 1898, lot 4, for 3,950 francs.
465.‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’, a short story published in 1845 by Edgar Allan Poe, which had been translated into French by Baudelaire.
466.This is La cathédrale de Chartres (étude) in Alfred Robaut, L’Œuvre de Corot, Paris 1905, vol. II, no. 222, p. 76, reproduced p. 77 (whereabouts unknown).
467.This is an opera in four acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, which was per-formed for the first time at L’Académie royale de musique in Paris on 18 May 1779. This production was at the Théâtre de la Renaissance.
468.Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: opera by Richard Wagner which premiered in Munich on 21 June 1868. Although lasting about four and half hours, it is a comedy sung in French, which Julie finds much more entertaining than Tristan und Isolde, which played at the Nouveau Théâtre de Paris, also in 1899.
469.Saint-Honoré d’Eylau is a fashionable church in the 16th arrondissement on the Place Victor Hugo, a stone’s throw from Julie’s home at 40 rue Villejust.
470.Sur la falaise des petites Dalles (1873), Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1950.89.
471.‘An absolutely dismal place.’
472.Agathe Valéry (1906–2002) had two brothers, Claude (b.1903) and François (1916–2002), neither of whom had children. Agathe married Paul Rouart (1906–1973), son of Alexis Rouart, Ernest’s older brother, thus complicating the Rouart family tree even more!