My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

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      Among the men and women who visited my villa, there were, inevitably, a few persons who were a trifle fèlé ("cracked"). I have known three young men who wished to create a new religion, and a professor of chemistry who said he would found the United States of Europe "within ten years." That was fifteen years ago. I met a man who had made a vast fortune in the manufacture of combs, and whose palatial country-house was daintily called "Peignefin," in one word (a small-toothed comb). He looked very thoughtful one day, and I asked what ailed him. His reply was superb: "Madame, I have just made up my mind to spend the rest of my life, and my fortune, in searching for the Absolute."

      I knew a sportsman who, having been crossed in love, devoted his life to the study of certain minerals, and a gentleman, otherwise sane, who decorated his house from roof to cellar, with the shells of the oysters he had eaten and the corks of the champagne bottles he had emptied, after having scrupulously inscribed on these gastronomic mementoes the dates of the merry feasts they recalled to him!

      Three men stand out from this mixed crowd of acquaintances as my faithful and trusted friends—three men wonderfully gifted and yet wonderfully modest, three men with golden hearts and lofty minds: Bonnat, the painter; Massenet, the composer; and Coppée, the poet.

      I knew Bonnat for nearly twenty years. He used to sign his letters to me "your old and devoted grand-father," or, more briefly, "Your... Methuselah." The great painter to whom the world owes amongst other masterpieces a powerful "Saint Vincent de Paul," and those gems of psychology, the "Portrait of Renan," and the "Portrait of My Mother," loved classic music, and what is better, understood it. During the twenty years of our friendship only a few times did he fail to attend the concerts given at my house. Like my father he had a special weakness for classic music, and I believe he would have loved to listen to Beethoven's Septett every day of his life. It was M. B., the Attorney-General, who first introduced him to me. I called on M. Bonnat at his house, which had been built by Bernier, the architect of the Opera Comique. On the ground floor were the apartments of his sister and his mother. A monumental staircase decorated with frescoes painted by Puvis de Chavannes led to the artist's rooms, and above, to the studio crowded with old carved wood, magnificent bronzes by Barye, and a number of fine paintings—including one by his beloved Botticelli—on the walls.

      Bonnat—above all a portrait painter—had a curious way of working. He hardly worked at his model—directly. He preferred to watch him, or her, in a round hand-mirror which he held in his left hand—the hand which also held the palette. At the back of the studio stood a small cheval-glass, placed in such a position that it reflected the portrait. He watched both images, and... worked. Another curious method of his was to turn the canvas when he retouched this or that detail.

      Bonnat worked in silence. He did not think it necessary to make his model talk so as to get at his, or her, "psychology," but was satisfied with painting what he saw. In this, he reminded me of Rodin, the greatest sculptor since Michel-Angelo, whom I once heard say: "The artist cannot improve upon nature, and Life is Beauty."

      Bonnat, energetic and wiry, believed in work, work, work—which, by the way, is also Rodin's motto—and achieved wonderful portraits, although I am aware that the pointillists, the cubists, the post-impressionists, and the post-post-impressionists hold other views!

      He had "his" arm-chair in my drawing-room, and would sit there for hours, listening to the music or watching my guests, and rarely opening his lips. He was fond of Marthe, always had his pockets full of "surprises" for her, and often took her to his studio, where she loved to gaze at his beautiful collection of butterflies, with which she held long, mysterious conversations.

      

BONNAT, BY HIMSELF "Your Old, Devoted 'Grand-Father'"

      One day, when I came to sit for my portrait, Marthe, who had taken a long walk with me in the Bois, and whose cheeks, rosy from the outside air, threw into relief her dark brown eyes, sat down on the blue satin gown which I wore in the picture, and which my maid had just brought. Bonnat saw Marthe, and said to her, "Don't move, little one, I must paint you just as you are." In a few seconds, there was a canvas on his easel, his hand held the usual mirror, and—he was at work. In less than an hour, he had painted Marthe, and the likeness was so perfect and speaking, that I cried: "Stop! Don't touch your work. Don't alter or add anything! Not a stroke more!"

      Alas, Bonnat persisted in perfecting his work. Then he found that the canvas was not large enough.... Marthe was "cut" across the middle of her skirt.... There was too much "air" above the head, and too little at the sides.... He would have the canvas enlarged.

      But when it was returned to him, he did not like the seams, and precipitately painted out the picture.

      I came with my mother and Marthe to see my child's masterful portrait and to sit for mine. When we found that the picture had been destroyed, my mother cried with rage; I shed tears of disappointment. And when I told my old friend that he might have kept the bust only, and cut the picture in a suitable oval, he was as sorry as we all were. That day I had not the heart to sit, nor did Bonnat have the heart to paint!

      I spent many delightful hours in that studio. Bonnat asked me to decorate and arrange it to my taste, for he knew full well the intense joy I had in handling beautiful or rare things, and how keen was my love of proportion, harmony, and colour-schemes....

      The painter, who was my husband's friend as well as mine, was one of the few men aware that we were not as happy as we appeared or pretended to be. He knew that often in Society, masks, more or less transparent, are worn by husbands and wives, and he did his best to give us those joys and interests which add so much to life, especially when the mainspring is broken and the machine has to be kept going as best it can.

      Bonnat was kind to all, especially to poor artists. I once spoke to him about a young and unsuccessful painter who believed in his genius and, what is worse, had made another share his delusions; a poor little girl to whom he gave his unknown name and who gave him her love and—several children. I did my utmost to relieve their misery, and then wrote and asked Bonnat to examine the young man's work.

      I went to the studio in the Rue Bassano shortly afterwards.

      "Well, what is it like?" I asked.

      "Nothing in it so far," Bonnat replied. "Why on earth does the fellow paint? The only way of saving him is to make him give up Art and adopt some other profession. Will you send him to me one of these days?"

      "He's downstairs, waiting...." And I ran away before my old friend could exclaim his usual "Just like you!"

      Bonnat questioned the young painter about his parents and heard that they were farmers. In his entertaining way he spoke of Nature, country-life, the simple life.... "And do you really think," he exclaimed in conclusion, "that if it were not for the Institute, the Council of the Légion d'Honneur, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, of which I am the director, and a score of other Societies and Committees to which I belong, I would remain here one single hour longer. No, sir! And you should consider yourself as a lucky dog. If I were free, as you are, I would go and live in my dear Saint-Jean-de-Luz, near the sea and near the Pyrenees, and breathe, and work.... As for painting, it is a wonderful thing, fascinating, ideal, sublime and all that, and I am rather fond of it myself, but there's no living in it unless you made a name for yourself forty years ago, as I did, for people liked good and beautiful things in those days, and paid for them.... If I were you, I'd paint what I pleased—in my leisure, and adopt some simple profession to earn my living. Ask your father to let you help him on his farm, and if you send me a picture every year and it's good enough, I'll try to get it accepted at the Salon.... СКАЧАТЬ