An Artist in her Own Right

by Ann Marti Friedman

  The thought of going home to rooms shut up with all their unpleasant memories oppresses me. I wonder if it would be possible to avoid returning altogether: to hire an agent to pack up the studio and my personal things, sell the apartment and its contents at auction. At the very least, should I decide to return, I will clean out the rooms of everything shabby or evocative of bad memories, and redecorate.

  Jeanne, Marianne and I spent a happy Christmas together. I treated all of us to new dresses, letting Jeanne pick out the fabrics – soft red wool for me, green for her, and blue for Marianne, to match her eyes.

  What fun we had, Jeanne and I! We had the shop deliver the parcels to the dressmaker, then went home to get her mother and bring her with us. Jeanne refused to tell her where we were taking her. “It’s a surprise, Maman,” she said firmly, pulling her along. Marianne did not want to come at first – too much to do, too tired, and dinner not yet begun – it was with half-stifled annoyance that she finally gave in and came with us. She melted completely when she felt the fabric – lighter, softer and warmer than any dress she’d had before. Then she looked frightened and protested that she couldn’t accept such a gift. I didn’t argue, just kissed her cheeks and said firmly, “Joyeux Noël.” She was stunned for a moment, then startled me by kissing my cheek in return and saying, mimicking my tone, “Merci beaucoup!” Then Jeanne insisted on kissing both of us in the same way. Christmas came early, there in the dressmaker’s shop, with ease and warmth flowing among us. The moment did not last long – the seamstress and her assistant needed to take our measurements, and then we went on to consider styles and details – and Marianne to remind the dressmaker to fashion little Jeanne’s dress so that it could be let out and lengthened as she grew. But the warmth and the softness of the moment stay with me, as pleasant and caressing as the fabric itself.

  The following week, after collecting our purchases, we went to the milliner and the shoemaker. The milliner pleased me immensely when she called Marianne and Jeanne “your daughter and granddaughter.” When we had made one last stop to buy coats and parasols to complete our outfits, we went to a café to celebrate. Patrons looked up as we entered, three ladies in pretty dresses, laughing among ourselves.

  My memoirs are finished, the good and bad of my past contained in these pages. Now I look forward to new adventures. Josée responded to my Christmas letter with an invitation to join her in Rome this winter. At long last I will fulfill my dream of seeing that city’s wonders. I hope to meet the Holy Father with a heart cleared of bitterness and filled with joy.

  After experiencing Italy I will return to Paris to sell the apartment on the rue des Saints-Pères. I will leave behind all things with unhappy memories and return to Toulouse. Perhaps, in twenty years’ time, I can write another memoir entitled “Happiness.”

  Chapter 16

  Rome, 1841

  Carnival. Everyone tells me I must be in Rome in time for Carnival.

  To prepare for the journey, I read eagerly Stendhal’s Promenades in Rome. He was there fifteen years ago, but what is that in the Eternal City – the blink of an eye. I trust the Coliseum is still there, and Saint Peter’s, and the masterpieces of Raphael and Bernini. The fountains still spout water, and the Tiber flows through. The ghosts of my past wandered there – Antoine, Géricault, and Denon – will I feel their presence as I too walk these streets?

  I cannot make Stendhal’s recommended coach trip from Paris, of course – and I do not wish to experience the Simplon Pass in the dead of winter – so I devise an alternate route. I will go by coach from Toulouse to Marseilles, thence to Civitavecchia via steamer, and from there to Rome again by coach. My banker gives me a letter of credit to cover my living expenses. Josée, now that the return of Napoleon’s remains is over, is delighted at the twin prospects of a reunion and of spending the winter in a warmer climate than Paris, and promises to make all haste to meet me there. She writes to the Conte del Borgo to rent rooms for us in his palazzo. (She stayed there before and the rooms have north light that makes them ideal for painting.) I pack my trunk, bid a tearful farewell to Jeanne and Marianne, and set out on a cold January morning. On this journey, however, I am not running away from my memories but toward a new adventure and whatever the future might bring.

  The Mediterranean is my first experience of the sea and voyage by steamship. I am not sick for a moment and stay on deck as long as I can, reveling in the blue above and below. Docking in Civitavecchia, I find that the Italian phrase book I studied en route has been of benefit (though sometimes my shyly proffered phrases elicit an enthusiastic torrent of words I understand not at all). I exchange my francs for a handful of scudi, paoli, and baiocchi and board the coach for Rome. Light is failing as we arrive, and the palazzo, with its grimy exterior and overgrown courtyard, has a forbidding air but the Conte’s housekeeper is expecting me. Suddenly worn out from my days of travel, I make an early night of it, smiling to myself as I drift off to sleep. I’m in Rome … Rome … Rome …

  Waking up in Rome, in this foreign city, I have a sense of renewal, almost a rebirth. I have no history here, only a future. I am no longer the grimly disappointed woman who arrived in Toulouse four months ago. Writing this memoir has caused me to remember the young, hopeful woman and artist I once was. Here, away from the routines of home, I have a chance to recapture her. A chance, too, to revive my artistic ambitions with fresh subject matter and the inspiration of the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque. My hands long for drawing materials, for paints and brushes.

  The delicious smells of coffee and bread still warm from the bakery draw me from my bedroom. A young woman serves them at a table in the sitting room, and between my phrase book and pantomime, we manage to communicate. She is the old housekeeper’s daughter, Gloria. After breakfast, I unpack my trunk, pin up the pencil portraits of Jeanne and Marianne, and explore the flat, two bedrooms and a sitting room that will serve as our studio. The rooms are light and clean, I am relieved to see, not at all like the building’s exterior. The setting and furniture are grand but have grown shabby, the remnants of the splendor of the Baroque. It is comfortable but not as intimidating as one would think of living in a palace. My bedroom has a desk and chair by the window for writing and sketching. There are a wardrobe and bed, a washstand behind a screen, and a faded carpet on the floor. I have finished the ream of paper purchased in Toulouse (the memoir stays wrapped in my trunk) but the writing habit is upon me. After I visit the bank to deposit my letter of credit, I will get more paper and ink.

  I exit the palazzo – the courtyard is not so forbidding in the daylight – and follow a tangle of streets to the Via del Corso, the principal thoroughfare of fashionable Rome, where the Carnival will take place in two weeks’ time. Numerous shops are selling masks and costumes; there is a sense of anticipation in the air. I find whimsical feathered hair ornaments for Josée and me and give myself up to the delights of browsing and wandering slowly. Carriages pass to and fro; city men and women in fashionable dress mingle with brightly clad contadini and contadine from the countryside; couples are strolling, sometimes arm in arm, all intent upon enjoying themselves. This must be the habit of dolce far niente that Josée has recommended to me, the sweetness of doing nothing. After taking care of my business at the bank, I find a shop that sells both stationery and art supplies and purchase writing paper, a sketchbook and drawing materials.

  I sit down at the window of a café, order coffee and pastries and continue to observe the crowd. On impulse, I take out the sketchbook and begin to draw the scene before me. After an hour of happy absorption, I make my way home for the dinner that Gloria has promised. I spend the afternoon sketching the view from my window, a roof-scape dominated by the dome of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in the distance, and surrender myself to the dream and reality of at last being in Rome.

  The next day, I go to Saint Peter’s for morning Mass, to give a hearty prayer of thanks. After the service I stand in the midst of all the grandeur, the lush art of
marble, bronze, gold, paint on canvases and on the dome, the dramatic use of light, and let it sink into my senses. I wander here and there, sometimes alone in front of a work, sometimes on the fringe of a crowd, hearing snatches of conversation in multiple languages and accents. I find Raphael’s Transfiguration and stand rapt before it, taking in the calm of the Savior and the prophets above, the chaos of the crowd below, pointing and gesticulating – much as the crowd of admirers of art is doing all around me. I feel a laugh welling up inside, wondering whether Raphael anticipated this would happen and was poking gentle fun at his admirers. Michelangelo’s Pietà moves me greatly, encapsulating the poetry of mourning, the living and the dead so beautiful and at peace. It tugs at my heart, remembering all the loved ones whose loss I have written about, a gentle catharsis and an affirmation of beauty.

  But it is Francesco Mochi’s Saint Veronica that most catches my attention – the antithesis of the calm Mary – windblown, with strong emotions, her veil that retained the imprint of Christ’s face when she gave it to him to wipe his sweat away during his walk to his death and her whole being indignant at the injustice, her mouth open in a scream of pain, her drapery evidence of her tempest of emotions. If Raphael’s Transfiguration gently mocks the crowd, Mochi’s Veronica exhorts them to pay attention, to fully comprehend the horror of what she has seen. I thrill to the emotional power of her, feel a kinship to her after all the intense emotions I have faced and chronicled in my memoir. I gaze up at the saint with sympathy as the indifferent crowd jostles beneath her. Occasionally someone with a guidebook will stand beside her and glance briefly at the sculpture as though mentally checking it off his list before moving on to the next monument recommended in the book. I stand before it for some minutes more before I tear myself away.

  Outside in the winter sunlight, I am amazed to discover I have spent two hours in the cathedral after Mass without being aware of the time. I am suddenly a little faint with hunger and hire a calouche, a Roman fiacre, to take me home. I know there will be biscuits, cheese and fruit there, and a flask of good wine.

  I spend the next few days wandering about, pausing to sketch when something of interest catches my eye – a flower growing out of an ancient Roman fragment, a Baroque fountain sculpture, a group of children playing – getting lost at will, but finding my way again by using the Dome of Saint Peter’s as a guide. Returning to the Corso, I purchase bouquets of flowers for our rooms to have them in readiness for Josée’s arrival.

  Finally, she arrives. I have a brief sense of dislocation upon seeing her, having written of her as part of the past recalled. Now that she is before me in the present, I recover to give her a fierce hug. She draws back in pleased surprise, giving me a long appraising look, noting my new dress that is no longer widow’s black, my less severe hairstyle, and a more relaxed air than when we parted. She smiles approval of what she sees and reaches out to caress the curve of my cheek as if wanting to reassure herself this is indeed the same friend who lived a life of pinched disapproval in Paris. I laugh out loud at her amazement.

  “What a beautiful dress – that deep red suits you!”

  I twirl like the Merry Augustine of old.

  The Conte’s housekeeper, who has known Josée for years, brings tea and cakes and promises a delicious supper of favorite items. After she departs, I help Josée unpack, while she regales me with gossip of Paris and the art world. I hear about Bonaparte’s interment and the ceremonies surrounding it, and what a good price her paintings will fetch when she completes them. (It is the promise of that income that enables her to borrow the money for an impromptu trip to Rome, the fulfillment of our long-held wish to be here together.) I feel at once part of it and at a remove. But it matters to Josée and Josée matters to me, so I listen and make the appropriate responses, gradually relaxing into our accustomed companionship.

  The next day, Josée lays out an itinerary of places to visit as well as plans to get in touch with her many friends and contacts in the artist community of Rome. I will enjoy meeting them, she says. I hesitate, remembering the gathering at Horace Vernet’s studio, where I was recognized principally as the widow of the man who painted Jaffa, but she reassures me. We are far away from the fame of Gros and his paintings of a long-dead emperor. I will be judged only on the merits of my own work.

  My own work. I long for brushes and canvas. Josée takes me to a shop where many artists buy their supplies. She meets old friends there. An English painter, James and his French studio mate, François, ask if we will join them in sketching at the Vatican Stanze tomorrow, and Josée accepts on our behalf. I am surprised at the ease of acquaintance, after so many years of being solitary with only my sister and my one friend for company.

  The Papal rooms decorated by Raphael and his pupils are already crowded with easels when we arrive. A crowd of attentive pupils sits before The School of Athens, copying groups and individual figures. We wander through the rooms to find a place where four can sit together, finally settling in front of the Expulsion of Heliodoros. My eye goes immediately to the angelic horseman, the beauty and energy of both rider and beast. I think of Antoine’s Murat at Aboukir and Géricault’s Charging Chasseur, paintings I loved by men I once loved – copying this figure is a tribute to both them and their work. I lose myself in my task to the extent that when Josée compliments me on my drawing, I am surprised – I had forgotten she was there.

  Waiting for my companions to finish, I glance around the room at the others, paying particular attention to one young man who appears to be in his late twenties, the same age Antoine was during his visit to Rome. I tiptoe behind him to find he too has been copying the horseman, but in oils. Standing there, I have the odd feeling of watching the young Antoine I never knew, as he snatched time from his art-gathering duties to paint and to study. My heart warms at the thought, surprising me by the new compassion I feel for him. Just then the young man turns and catches sight of me, and the illusion of Gros is gone, but we share a smile. I give an appreciative nod to his painting and he a small bow of thanks. My spirits give a little skip. If I were twenty years younger, I might flirt with him, but I am all too conscious of my age and dignity. (I want to be a new woman, but not to the extent of making a fool of myself.) With another smile, I make my way back to my companions, who are packing away their things.

  We have our midday meal at a trattoria that is evidently a favorite of the artists, for all around I hear conversations about art: what new colors to try and where to purchase the best ones, recommendations for which collection to visit next, and debates over the merits of this artist or that. François is clearly smitten with the beautiful Italian girl who serves the meals, while James is a little in love with Josée. We discuss the expeditions we will make to the Campagna and Hadrian’s Villa when it is warmer. François and James share a studio on the Pincian Hill with its magnificent vista of Rome; they do a brisk business in views of Rome and its surroundings for the many English and French visitors who wish to take home souvenir paintings.

  James asks which is my favorite Roman monument – or, since I am newly arrived, which one I would wish to see first. I am taken aback by the question. My associations with Ancient Rome were not those of a youth spent reading the classics – I had not – but of David and his harangues on the superiority of the subject matter, and of the cold sterility of Antoine’s late style. But I did not want to be governed any longer by these unpleasant memories of my past.

  “I don’t know,” I reply instead. “What do you recommend?”

  Thus it is that I find myself standing in the Coliseum that afternoon. It is unusually cold for January and there seems to be the sparkle of ice crystals in the air despite the brilliant sunshine. I draw in my breath at the sheer immensity of the space, dwarfing the visitors who come to admire the monument or kiss the Cross set up at its center, where the Christian martyrs perished. With all its open arches, the Coliseum is a structure made for warm weather, and we shiver in the wind that whistles through it and
through us as we stand there, but I cannot be other than impressed by the size and ambition of the place, imagining that the wind is the noise of the crowd cheering on the skill of the combatants and the doom of the loser. The ancient past is alive in that moment but then the wind dies down and I become conscious of conversations in French, English, German and Italian all about me, as well as some languages I cannot identify.

  “You see?” Josée says, gesturing to the seats, aware of my experience which must have paralleled her own.

  A little breathless, I nod. The Rome of old does indeed come alive here.

  I return to the shop on the Corso again for more sketchbooks, then paints and canvas. The shop also rents easels, and I arrange for two to be delivered for Josée and me. I begin by painting the roof-scape from my window and work up other sketches to put on canvas.

  François and James invite us to a party at their studio, where the conversation is similar to that in the restaurant – art and artists, evaluating the merits of the masters of the past and the more ordinary folk of the present. Josée introduces me to the others as simply, “My friend Augustine Dufresne, painter from Paris.” Even the students from the nearby French Academy at the Villa Medici don’t associate me with Antoine or Jaffa. Everyone accepts me as an artist in my own right. It enhances my sense of coming into my own, helps me recover the self-confidence of my youthful years in Madame Benoist’s studio.

  When others ask me what I paint, for a moment I am at a loss for a reply. I have done landscape and still life and genre, the lesser categories of the hierarchy of art – I have learned not to announce too much ambition or threaten those who think of themselves as creating high art – a habit left over from years of marriage, of moving among the great men of the art world. But while that is what I have been accustomed to paint, I am in search of something new, of the artist I could become. I amend my reply. “I have done landscapes and still life, but now I am in search of new subject matter.”