Such very good friends! -- life among the impressionists

Here is the young Renoir curled up in a chair in his good pal Frederic Bazille's studio. One of the reasons I was compelled to write Claude and Camille: a novel of Monet was my fascination for the friendship among these then utterly unknown artists, particularly in the 1860s and 1870s when Monet had likely never heard of a water lily; he was fortunate to have a humble potted plant in the rooms he lived in! The young impressionists (who had never heard the word impressionists then either) slept on each others floors, painted the same model side by side, scrounged paint and scraped down canvases and shared dreams. It is interesting to me that often a creative person rises in a creative group. A fascinating nonfiction book is the Private Lives of the Impressionists. And a tender novel about Renoir which I recommended some months ago is Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party. Both capture the unique friendship of these talented men and women.

the personal things Renoir left behind

I am only allowed in this generous blogspot to post in one image per each blog. I did find a treasure trove of personal things Renoir left behind listed in Hantmann's Auctioneers and appraisers. I chose the wedding certificate to his beloved Aline and then found so many other things on the site that you can go look for yourself and perhaps put a nice bid on Aline's beautiful fringed kimono. I coveted Renoir's spectacles. I wonder what strength they were?

I have a strong affinity as a historical novelist to touch objects worn by those figures I so love. I think it would be wonderful to see Monet's bedroom slippers. I have to look on line!

Here is the Hantmann's link if you wish to go shopping among the misc. things left by the impressionists. Would anyone have Manet's famous opera hat and cane?

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/ebay/hantmans_renoir5.htm

Eugene Boudin, Monet's first teacher

I think I may have posted something about this fine man and artist here before, but a Twitter friend directed me to a NPR site with this photo and I wanted to share it. If I might quote from the story:

Boudin didn't start out to be a painter. His father ran a ferryboat between Honfleur and Le Havre, the big English Channel port, and Boudin worked on the boat as a child. "And one day he fell overboard and was caught by one seaman," says Bridget Mueller, who guides visitors around Normandy. "Otherwise he would have drowned — so his mother said, 'You're not going on this ship again.' "

Instead, young Eugene went to school. A teacher spotted artistic talent, and from then on, Boudin went to sea via the canvases he painted. Mueller says there's hidden proof of the artist's seamanship: a notation on the back of every painting, recording the weather and the winds on the day it was made.

It was Boudin who challenged the 17-year-old arrogant Claude Monet to try landscape painting and the rest is history. Claude never looked back. Even in his old age, he referred to Boudin as "my master." The whole story can be found at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128174560

the later years of Claude Monet

I went down to the Gagosian Gallery in New York City which is exhibiting a rare and stunning collection of late Monet paintings through June 26th. If you are in the area, please go down and see it. I went with a few friends, one who is a painter, and we spent at least an hour in the several rooms. The painting I show here from 1906 is bucolic but most of the paintings around 1914-1919 are not. How could they be? The artist's eyesight was failing him; he had lived through the ravages of World War I in which his sons and the sons of his good friend Renoir had fought. Death had taken his beloved second wife Alice and his older son Jean as well as his beautiful stepdaughter Susanne whose portrait on a hill is the cover for my novel CLAUDE & CAMILLE. The old friends he had loved had died or were far from him and his work, which has seemed so radical in 1865, was now old style. More and more he stayed within his house and gardens, finding contentment there. And still he did not "cease from exploration" as T.S. Eliot writes.

Do go if you are in the New York City area. Several pictures are from private collections and may not be easily seen again. I hope to go again myself before it closes.

My intense love for Monet's best friend Frédéric

On visiting the Metropolitan Museum exhibition The Origins of Impressionism fifteen years ago (which was the original inspiration of my novel Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet), I must confess that the painting I fell in love with was an early Monet but the painter I felt I had to know was Frédéric Bazille, the tall medical student from Montpellier who had to paint, who was brilliant, charming, the best of friends and rather self-effacing. He came from a wealthy family and when his friends Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, and Claude Monet needed a place to paint or sleep, he gave away every corner of his floor. In one letter when away from the studio he wrote Renoir to search Frédéric's bedroom drawer for Frédéric's pocket watch and pawn it.

We have a great many of the letters he wrote home to his parents whose financial support he needed through his 20s as he made nothing from his art and after what was obviously evasions and lies (how many time could he tell his parents that his medical exams were yet again postponed which was why he hadn't exactly passed them!), he fell happily into a full time life in the arts. He was an excellent amateur actor and playwright, a passionate classical pianist, and the world's best friend. He did not live very long and the others mourned him forever. For a time he was the main character in my novel until Monet took over and then Camille.

This photograph was taken when he was about 24 years old; at that time he was modeling for Monet as a favor and painting at his side, but his style was really not impressionism. It was a gorgeous style just his own and he had hardly begun to develop it when his years were ended. I felt from the first time I saw his picture that I loved him.

THE WOMEN IN MONET's GARDEN

There were five major women in Monet's gardens: his mother, Camille, Alice, Suzanne and Blanche. Read about them in my blog at Linus's Blanket and how they influenced him.


http://www.linussblanket.com/women-monets-garden-stephanie-cowell/

more on Manet's elusive model Victorine Meurent

Who were the models for the impressionists? Often a mistress or a wife or a step-daughter (Monet had four), someone you did not have to pay by the hour. Young and pretty girls got the highest fees. In the 1860s when the impressionists were mostly still in their 20s, all you had to do was wander over to the Pigalle fountain and find a model for they collected there.

There are many fascinating things about Victorine. Manet first saw her walking in the street carrying her guitar. She taught violin and guitar, sang in café-concerts, and painted. She was obviously intelligent and made her way the best as she could in a world where unprotected women had a hard time financially. She went her own way artistically and in 1876 one of her paintings was accepted by the prestigious state Salon while Manet’s was rejected. She continued to model, even for Toulouse-Lautrec. When Manet died, she wrote a polite letter to Manet’s widow, saying that the painter had promised to remember her in his will. As far as we know, Madame Manet did not answer.

All but one of Victorine’s own paintings has been lost. I think she must have been a fascinating woman who went her own way. She is the subject of two novels: A Woman with No Clothes On and Mademoiselle Victorine.