An Artist in her Own Right

by Ann Marti Friedman

  I thought to reassure him with praise for the painting. “You asked when we were at home if you had caught the essence of him. As my reaction shows, indeed you have. He was so proud to be a cuirassier. He would have loved to ride Dagobert. The Legrands will be very pleased.”

  “Thank you,” he said in almost a whisper.

  Encouraged, I went on: “We met in front of Jaffa, did you know that?” and went on to tell him about that day and the encounter with the artist’s model afterward. He laughed. I cast around in my mind for other things I could tell him, but there were none. There was the boy I had loved who had become a soldier and died still a boy, while the girl who had loved him had wept and grown up and married someone else, a common enough story at that time. It was the details that made it special, made it our story, Charles’ and mine; and I could not give them away, especially to my husband. Then the source of his unease finally struck me, and I said, “Antoine, are you jealous of him?”

  He turned a tormented face to me. “Of him? No.” He waved a dismissive hand at the dead hero as if to say, he may be eternally young, but I’m still alive. He had to force the next words out. “Of your love for him? Yes.”

  “He’s been gone five years – until now,” and I nodded toward the canvas where the nonchalant lieutenant still gazed into the distance as if too polite to eavesdrop on this disagreement between husband and wife. “He died in Spain before I met you, and I have been married to you for four of those years, and never––” I was alarmed and indignant at this suspicion of infidelity and had risen halfway out of my chair. “Never have I even looked at another––” I stopped, choking on that last word. Our marriage may not have been the happiest, but I took pride in obeying my vows to the letter. I was too angry to say more and stood looking at Antoine, trembling with indignation. He flushed with embarrassment; had he been a boy he would have hung his head. I expected him to approach me with a kiss or an embrace; instead his eyes turned to the portrait.

  “You’re my wife. I knew you had loved him. I knew the Legrands had chosen me because of you. As I was painting him, I could not help thinking, I am painting my wife’s lover. I am reduced to painting my wife’s lover. I am being paid to accept the humiliation of painting my wife’s lover. I am—”

  “Antoine, stop! You’re making yourself ill over nothing. He was never my lover. He was a boy I loved before I met you. And his love for me came only after his loyalty to his Emperor and his dreams of military glory and his love for his parents. It wasn’t enough to stop him from going to Spain to be killed.” I had never before so clearly admitted this and it hurt me afresh to realize it. I was angry with Charles and angry with my husband for forcing me to face the humiliating truth yet again. “I married you, Antoine, and I have loved you as best I could. I’m sorry if it hasn’t been good enough for you.”

  I snatched up my hat and reticule and ran out of the studio. In the street I walked with a determined pace. I was clutching his handkerchief and would gladly have thrown it away, but I was weeping with rage and humiliation and could not go into a shop looking like a disheveled madwoman. Furiously I dabbed at my eyes with the wretched square of cotton. I paused at a café to drink mineral water and proceeded more calmly to the Jardin du Luxembourg.

  It was not crowded on a weekday despite the hot weather and the lanes felt cool and private. I made my way to the Fontaine de Médicis and sat on one of the chairs, soothed by the sound of the water and the conversational quacking of the ducks. It always delighted me when one of them dived for something underneath her and presented a backside of feathers to the world. I was glad to be diverted from the painful scene in the studio. It was too horrible to think back upon, but the thought of going home to his suspicions was worse. So I looked at the ducks and tried not to think at all. I wished I had my sketchbook and pencils with me. I was still clutching Antoine’s handkerchief. I got up and went to the fountain, dipped it in the cool water to wash my face, and spread it on a shrub to dry. I returned to watching the ducks. Two drakes were courting a female, showing off in front of her by chasing each other with demonstrations of speed and displays of bright feathers. She preened her mottled brown plumage and ignored her suitors, who quacked the more loudly at each other as if irked at her indifference. She appeared to find little to choose between the two and waited patiently for the winner to declare himself. I envied her detachment.

  “I thought I’d find you here.” My husband’s voice broke into my reverie.

  “Yes,” I said calmly. “I’m watching the ducks do their courting.”

  He looked at the drake that quacked triumphantly as the other took flight. “I hope he makes a success of it.” Before I could respond, he spoke intently. “Augustine, I’m so sorry. Jealousy got the better of me. I know I had no cause. I would never have undertaken the portrait had I known it would result in this bad feeling between us. It won’t happen again.” I looked at him. As I had given him no cause for his jealousy, I could not give him any reassurance for unraveling it. He would need to come to terms with it on his own.

  “Augustine – I was wrong – please – forgive me – can you?” I was touched despite myself and put my hand on his. I realized then that, however much I might hurt, he would always be the one who would need comforting. He lifted my hand to his lips and then clasped it. Two large tears rolled down his cheeks and I brushed them off with my free hand, caressing his cheek as I did so. This caused fresh tears to flow; he groped for his handkerchief, forgetting he had given it to me. I looked to where I had left it. Someone had removed it from the bush, thinking, perhaps, to have found himself a treasure. This struck me as funny, and I gave a long peal of laughter. “It’s gone,” I told Antoine, lightheartedly. “Never mind!” On impulse I kissed his eyes again and again until his tears had ceased. Two girls passing by giggled to see aged adults behaving like young lovers; I ignored them. Eventually we arose and walked arm-in-arm down the length of the garden toward the Observatory. Antoine sent his mother a note with a messenger to say we would be lunching at a restaurant. After the tension of the morning it was a relief to give way to the pleasures of eating, and to follow that by taking a room at the hotel next door, in broad daylight. I felt quite––

  But there are some places the reader may not follow me, and to bed with my husband is one of them.

  I brought the Legrands to the studio to see Charles’s portrait after it had been varnished and framed. That day was again the cause of tears, but happy ones. Antoine had reverted to his usual charming self in front of clients. However, it was a relief to both of us when the painting was taken from the studio to be delivered. When they sent payment, he gave the money to me “for paints and canvas” as a final apology.

  Maman Madeleine was indignant: he was spoiling me; the money should be invested, or put aside in gold, to be on the safe side. If the rumors she heard were true, the Empire was in serious difficulties and it was said the Emperor’s luck was running out. “Be quiet, Maman!” My husband’s sharp reproof was not at all his usual loving and patient tone and I sensed fear lurking beneath it. His mother opened her mouth to protest, saw the look on his face, and closed it again without saying another word.

  “The money is Augustine’s to save or spend as she pleases,” he continued in a normal tone of voice. But the fear we all lived with had been brought out in the open, and it would not be so easy to send it into hiding again. I took Maman Madeleine’s advice and converted the four thousand francs for Charles’s portrait into gold coins, taking care to do this a little at a time to lessen the risk of being robbed.

  For the news was not good, no matter how the carefully edited Bulletins of the Grande Armée tried to make it appear so. We were all frightened, even those of us who longed for an end to the fighting and the return of the Bourbons. We had been accustomed to success, even while deploring its cost. Now we were a nation in defeat.

  For Antoine, who loved Napoleon with his heart and soul, it was agonizing. He lived to paint his hero’
s accomplishments, but there were no new triumphs to record. His newest commission was not a battlefield scene: in the Dome of the Panthéon, the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, Bonaparte was recasting himself as successor to Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint Louis, the great medieval kings of France, lawgivers and supporters of the Church. It was a prestigious, well-paid assignment but not an exciting one; its main virtue for Antoine was keeping despair at bay.

  The long cold winter of defeat that started with Russia in 1812 never stopped. The months seemed to drag on interminably, alternating between hope and despair. For some, it was hope that Bonaparte would prevail and despair that Paris would fall. For others, it was hope that the Allies would take over without bloodshed and despair that he would insist on trying to fight and cause yet more good men to be killed for nothing. Our minds went back and forth between the realities of that day and the fears of the coming one.

  I was surprised to find this same vacillation in myself. The return of the Bourbons to their rightful place on the throne of France was an idea I had cherished since childhood. I detested Bonaparte for the slaughter of the youth of France and the suffering it caused. But his rise had also been the rise of France to a new era of glory not seen since the time of the Sun King, and I could not help but share in the shame we all felt at her downfall.

  How symbolic that the surrender of Paris and the entry of the allied troops would come in spring 1814 after Bonaparte abdicated and was sent into exile on Elba. I was one of the many who lined the streets around the Porte Saint-Denis on 31 March, waving our handkerchiefs, to welcome the Tsar, the King of Prussia, and the Austrian military commander at the head of their troops. I wondered how many in the crowd had been part of the cheering mob that had witnessed the execution of Louis XVI. How many now wearing the royal colors of blue and white had then worn the red, white and blue of the Revolution?

  For Gros it was the death of everything he had held dear for over eighteen years. I tried to reach out to him, but he shut me out, insisting angrily that he was all right, that everything would resolve itself for the best, that the Emperor – and here his face softened and his shoulders straightened – had faced overwhelming odds before and would pull off yet another miracle. He said it in the way mothers pray for their dying sons, clutching their rosaries, averting their eyes from the reality of the bandaged, battle-scarred figure on the bed, closing their ears to the priests who attempt to assure them their boys would soon depart for a better world. Antoine did not want to listen to anything I said. He fled to the comfort of Girodet and Denon.

  Once, a strange sound woke me in the middle of the night. His space in the bed was empty beside me. I sat up and listened more closely – violent sounds of breaking crockery and glass in the kitchen – the servants who slept in the attic couldn’t hear it. I went downstairs – Antoine was in an orgy of destruction, weeping – finally, he stopped, and broke down in racking sobs. He pushed me away when I tried to comfort him, and I crept back to bed.

  He cried, too, for his paintings, his precious children on whom he had lavished so much care and love. He was terrified they would be desecrated or burned. They were not destroyed – as the government had paid good money for them, they were considered national assets – but they were banished to the dungeons of the Louvre storerooms to languish in darkness for more than a decade.

  In the midst of all this came another blow. Joséphine was terminally ill, a matter of months, her doctors said.

  He and I went out to celebrate or mourn the events each in our own way. I did not tell him of my activities with the artist friends I met up with, as I knew they would pain him, but once we met on our street as I returned from cheering the Comte d’Artois, the brother of our new king, Louis XVIII, as he rode with the Paris National Guard to give thanks at Notre Dame Cathedral. Antoine took in the blue rosette I wore on my white dress, and my face flushed with the too-rare pleasure of enjoying the day, and was horrified.

  “How could you?” It came out almost as a hiss.

  I stood my ground. “The killing is over. At last! I am not the only one to give thanks for that.”

  “You don’t understand. They died for something: for France, for country, honor, and glory. To celebrate the allies’ win is to denigrate their sacrifice.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for him anymore, Antoine. He is gone. The truth can come out.”

  “Apologize! The truth is that he brought France its greatest gloire since Louis XIV, the Sun King.”

  “Who also bankrupted France in his search for glory,” I replied tartly. We entered the house. I took off my bonnet in front of the mirror in the entry, handing it and my shawl (as Antoine his hat and coat) to the maid who came running at the sound of our voices. We suspended the argument until she had left. I turned to the mirror again to smooth a stray lock of hair. Antoine stared at my reflection, outraged as much by my insistence in continuing as by my opinions. I looked back as calmly as I could, while his venom gathered force. His eyes flicked right and left, looking for something that would sting me as badly as I had stung him.

  “I would have thought, out of respect for the memory of your precious Charles,” he began, his voice turned lofty, morally superior, and smug, “you would refrain from celebrating. He believed in what he fought for.”

  I might have known he would use that. My reply was bitter. “And died uselessly nonetheless. I faced that truth long ago.”

  Then Maman Madeleine called reproachfully to me, to break up the argument. We did not speak to each other again for several days.

  Nonetheless, Gros went to pay his respects to Louis XVIII, from politesse and practicality. Having been painter to the highest persons in the land, he was not prepared to sink back into a purely middle-class portrait practice! His was a talent meant for grand themes, he said, even if the Bourbons were not the most inspiring subjects for his canvas. And the painting of the Dome – what would become of that? Most of it could easily be adapted for Bourbon use. Would the government commission still hold, and could he go ahead? The summer, the only time of year practicable for working in the space, was soon coming up. Who would now have the authority to approve it? He needed to find out. Besides, he was damned if he would let Gérard, dreadful man, get in there ahead of him. All of this came forth as he was dressing for court with special care, but it had the air of a man talking to keep his courage up. I murmured what reassurances I could, and wished I could volunteer to go in his place.

  His visit to the Tuileries was awarded, in time, with a commission to paint the King’s portrait. Well, it was a start.

  Chapter 7

  An Interlude: A Gathering of Women Artists

  Paris, 1813-1814

  Although I have already covered the years 1813-1814 in the preceding chapter centered on the decline of Napoleon’s Empire, the events surrounding my artistic career during that time formed an activity apart from the upheaval and its strain on my marriage. It was to be, ironically, a time of great productivity and growth. It was then, too, that I met Josée, who has been my friend ever since.

  When we returned from our honeymoon in Toulouse, I was no longer a girl and a bride, but a married woman. I had a household to run, a husband to take care of and learn to love, a mother-in-law to please, and girlfriends to impress with my new status. They exclaimed over my fortune in marrying a man so well established and resident in Paris, not attached to the army with the attendant anxieties I had known only too well. Some even inquired if I might already be pregnant. This always made me blush.

  The friends who had been fellow students at Taunay’s studio had other, more pressing questions. “What about your painting? You won’t have to give it up, will you?” Amongst this group, this was always our greatest anxiety – that the new duties of being a wife and mother or the disapproval of a husband and his family would force us to fold away our artistic ambitions with other girlhood dreams. While none of us dared to have as large an ambition as Gros or David, our art was important to us, and th
e thought of giving it up monstrously unfair.

  As I have already related, finding the space and time for it was not without its challenges. When household duties kept me at home, I took up still-life subjects of household objects and flower bouquets, reminding myself that many another artist had kept her hand in by painting what was before her.

  My artistic ambition might have withered had I not been welcomed into the circle of Charlotte Larrey and her sister Marie-Guillemine Benoist. Charlotte gave me what I most needed, a friend and colleague. She paid me the compliment of accepting me as an equal. The more I learned about her, the more I admired her. Her sister, prize-winner at the Salons and the only woman artist to be commissioned by Bonaparte to paint his portrait, is the better-known artist; her husband is the Larrey who collected the accolades of soldiers, doctors, and historians; but Charlotte, I have always thought, was one of the unsung heroines of the times.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she told me one day as we walked through the galleries of the Musée Napoléon. “Dominique was away for thirteen of our first twenty-one years of marriage. He wasn’t paid regularly and often had to pay for surgical supplies out of his own pocket. More than once they were stolen. He would come home with several thousand francs in hand all too rarely. I had to paint portraits just to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. Once, Dominique wrote to ask me to ask the Emperor’s favor by painting and presenting a miniature portrait of His Majesty, so that the back payment of his salary could be expedited. He was the favorite surgeon of the Emperor, praised in his dispatches, but if it were not for help from my sister, we would sometimes have starved. And yet my son – who watched me struggle with all of this – wants to become an army surgeon, just like his father.”