An Artist in her Own Right

by Ann Marti Friedman

  Everyone applauds. It is the reason so many of the others have come as well – that spirit of adventure. “What about preparing something for the Salon?” someone asks. Josée and I share a smile, remembering when she brought that up in Marie’s studio so long ago.

  We enter into the spirit of Carnival, renting an open carriage and costumes, tossing bouquets and sugarplums with abandon and returning home dusted with sugar as though we ourselves were a species of confectionery. My sides ache with laughing, a good ache. Having lunch afterward, replete with happiness, my mind turns to how to use Carnival to good artistic effect.

  I spend the rest of that day and the following one filling a sketchbook with memories of what I saw, sometimes a larger subject like the line of carriages, imagining how it might look from a balcony’s vantage point. Others are details, such as the slightly battered posy I retained, now in a glass of water on my desk.

  During the last two days of Carnival, the Corsa dei Barberi is run, the race of the wild Berber horses that so excited Géricault. Having written about his planned painting in my memoir – before that, I had not thought of it for years – I was curious to experience the race for myself. The first day, we stand near the Piazza del Popolo for the start of the race. The fiery, spirited horses wear ornamented bridles and ribbons, and the grooms can barely hold them back. A cannon booms and they are let loose. The crowd roars. Their hooves drum. My heart beats loud in my ears to the rhythm. I am sure Josée, too, must be able to hear it. The race does not last long, perhaps three minutes, but in those minutes I have lived, felt fully and truly alive.

  The next day, we are fortunate enough to be able to view the race from a friend’s balcony high above the Corso where we can see both the beginning and the end of the course. There is not the same excitement as the nearness of seeing the horses brought in, but it is still thrilling to see their manes and tails streaming as they gallop toward the wall of carpets that marks the finish line. Afterwards, I say to Josée, “I can see why Théo was so taken with this scene and wanted to paint it!” The old nickname rolls off my tongue before I can stop myself.

  “Théo – it’s the first time in years I’ve heard you mention Géricault. He was always such a bitter topic for you, even when he died you hadn’t forgiven him yet.”

  “I was thinking over that old business not long ago.”

  I have not yet told Josée of my memoir. I have lived alone with it for so long that I am reluctant to bring it to light, as though it would disintegrate and crumble away to nothing when exposed to open air, like the friable remains from ancient tombs that Denon had once described. But Josée is my oldest friend, and so many of the things I wrote about are ones to which she too was a witness. The book is in some ways a memorial of her life, the part of it we shared, as well. I can trust her.

  When we turn our steps toward our palazzo, I link my arm through hers. “When we get home, I’ll show you what I’ve been working on these past months.”

  “A sketchbook?” Her face is alight with interest.

  “In a way,” I reply, thinking, Yes, a sketch of my life. That night I present it to her, my precious ream of manuscript, with my heart again thudding in my chest, but intent upon taking the risk of sharing it. Risk, too, is part of this new phase of life I have determined upon.

  “I wrote my life,” I tell her, “and the more I exposed my bitterness, brought it out to air, the more it evaporated. The paper was listening and gave a sympathetic hearing. I don’t need to insist on feeling bitter anymore.”

  Josée reads it through in two evening sittings, and I can tell from the play of emotions across her face that she is moved deeply by it. When she finishes, she puts it tenderly in its brown paper wrapping and hands it back to me as if placing it in solemn trust.

  “When we return to Paris, you must see about getting this published. It speaks for so many women artists of our generation – for so many women of our generation.”

  The Lenten season is quieter than the time of anticipation preceding Carnival, a time of recovery from indulgences and of quiet reflection. I give up the customary foods – meat, pastries, chocolate and bonbons of all kinds – as an outward sign of grace. I have already given up the most important things – bitterness, bad memories, self-doubts. I do not give up painting or writing but make them thank-offerings from the bottom of my heart. My soul grows lighter each day as Easter approaches.

  Spring comes early in Rome. The gardens blossom with daffodils and crocus and fruit trees begin to bud. Fruit vendors sit at the edge of fountains that keep their wares cool. Josée and I join the crowds strolling along the Pincio, the hill that overlooks the Piazza del Popolo, greeting other artists from France in the grounds of the Villa Medici. We make frequent visits to the Borghese Gardens and venture out into the Campagna and Hadrian’s Villa to look at more remains of Ancient Rome. It is in drawing these with care and precision that I feel close to Denon, who lavished the same care on the monuments of Ancient Egypt.

  For us it is an intensely productive time in sketchbooks and on canvas. We go out every day it is fine and paint in our studio when the weather is inclement. Each Sunday we attend Mass in a different church and stay to view the paintings and sculptures found there. Other artists are doing the same and we engage in lively discussions with them. I do not hold back my opinions, which are listened to with respect. Sometimes a group of us gather by appointment and go to a trattoria afterward, where I am happy to pay for those who cannot afford it. Quietly I give them each a few scudi to help tide them over, and I refuse all offers of repayment. My happiness overflows into a generosity of spirit I did not know I possessed. I draw and paint with an abandon that astonishes even the productive Josée.

  Ever eager to find buyers for her paintings, Josée makes the acquaintance, through James, of a group of English tourists and invites them to our apartment. She urges me to set out my work as well, and to my delight I sell two scenes of the Carnival and one of the Coliseum. It is the first money I have ever earned as a painter in the thirty-seven years I have been practicing my art. After they leave, I throw my arms around Josée as we congratulate each other. Our visitors in turn recommend us to others, and each time I make a sale. I keep these coins in a little casket I bought on the Corso, and for Easter, I treat myself to a necklace and earrings of micro mosaic scenes of Rome.

  On Easter Sunday, we stand within the great Colonnade of Saint Peter’s to receive the benediction of Gregory XVI and then attend Mass in the cathedral. We walk around the grand church afterward, for no matter how many times we visit, there is always something new to discover that we have not noted before. As always, I stop to greet Saint Veronica, now an old friend, to reassure her that at least one person in the crowd is paying attention and making note.

  Arm in arm, we walk out into the sunshine.

  Epilogue

  Paris, 1842

  Sadly, my friend’s stay in Rome did not end as well as it began. She began to feel ill after Easter with an ailment that defied all the skill of the Roman doctors to diagnose it. We left Rome in June to spend the summer in Switzerland, hoping that a doctor at one of their famous spas could diagnose and cure whatever ailed her. They could not, but we made good use of our time filling our sketchbooks. The illness dampened but did not entirely erase the good spirits she had enjoyed during her Roman sojourn. “I cannot afford to spend any more of my life being bitter,” she said to me. “I cannot help feeling that it is the bitterness that took root and is causing me this trouble.”

  Finally, we returned to Paris, with its renowned medical schools, in the hope that one of their doctors could treat my friend. Numerous treatments were prescribed, but none of them helped. Her sister and I did all we could to make her comfortable but I was forced to watch my dear friend waste away. She died on 5 January 1842.

  Before then, however, she entrusted her memoir to my care and spoke of her pleasure in knowing that it, like her paintings, would bear witness to her time on earth. Thus I have
brought it to publication, revealing the whole of her, good and bad, the real person.

  She was buried in the Gros-Dufresne family vault at Père Lachaise Cemetery. It was the Gros family who chose her epitaph, ironically linking her name to the painting she had so disliked to be reminded of:

  Augustine Dufresne

  Veuve d’Antoine-Jean Gros

  Peintre de Jaffa

  [Augustine Dufresne

  Widow of Antoine-Jean Gros

  Painter of Jaffa]

  Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont

  Historical note

  Augustine Dufresne (1789-1842) was a real person. Most of the factual information known about her is gleaned from the biographies of her husband, the painter Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835). Their marriage was, by all accounts, not a happy one. None of Gros’s biographers – with the exception of Jean-Baptiste Delestre,1 who wrote during her lifetime – had anything good to say about her or about the marriage. J. Tripier-Lefranc was particularly vituperative about her, characterizing her as shrewish and excessively pious; but at the same time he is one of our best sources for documents, including in his work the texts of the 1809 marriage contract and her will, written in Rome in the spring of 1841.2

  I first became acquainted with Augustine during 1985 to 1999, when I researched and wrote about Antoine-Jean Gros and his paintings for Napoleon. After living with Monsieur Gros myself for fourteen years, I knew that he was not the easiest person to consistently like and admire, and I developed a sympathetic fellow feeling for his wife, the more so as she had to put up with twenty-two years of his adoring mother into the bargain. Augustine must have been a hopeful young woman once. What had led her to marry a man twice her age? Had the marriage been unhappy from the beginning? Or had it started with the best of intentions but soured in the course of time? What role had Antoine played in the failure of the marriage that his biographers weren’t telling? As my interests turned from art history to writing fiction, I wanted to explore these questions. I also thought Augustine would make a good subject for telling the story of this intensely masculine era from a woman’s point of view. And, having dealt for so long with Napoleon’s mythmaking, I wanted to tell the other side of the story. Thus I came to write about, and in the voice of, Augustine Dufresne and make her a Bourbon sympathizer.

  Her family members are real, with the exception of Grandmère Augustine, a fictional character based on my own Grandma Augusta, who didn’t approve of me much either. Augustine’s father, François-Simon Dufresne, was a friend of Dominique Vivant-Denon, who later arranged her marriage to Gros. The romance with Charles Legrand is imaginary but, like many other women of the era, she could well have had a soldier boyfriend who was killed. Augustine’s brother Baudouin-Henri in fact died in 1831, a few months before Gros’s mother, but I have placed his death several years later in the novel. Their mother died in 1829, but I have placed her death two years earlier to underscore the emotional impact of the discovery of Gros’s lovechild.

  All the artists mentioned in the novel existed, as did the paintings and decorative arts named and/or described in detail – Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonaparte in the Pest House at Jaffa (Paris, Musée du Louvre), The Battle of Aboukir (Versailles), Portrait of Empress Joséphine (Nice, Musée Masséna), Posthumous Portrait of Charles Legrand (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), François I and Charles V at Saint-Denis (Paris, Musée du Louvre), Louis XVIII Leaving the Tuileries, the Night of 19-20 March 1815 (Versailles), Embarkation of the Duchesse d’Angoulême at Pauillac (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts), and Hercules and Diomedes (Toulouse, Musée des Augustins); Théodore Géricault, Charging Chasseur, Wounded Cuirassier leaving the Field of Battle and The Raft of the Medusa (all Paris, Musée du Louvre), Head of a Drowned Man (St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis Art Museum), and Portrait of a Black Man (Los Angeles, California, J. Paul Getty Museum); Eugène Delacroix, Dante’s Boat (Paris, Musée du Louvre); and Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, View of Gros’s Tomb at Père-Lachaise (Toulouse, Musée des Augustins). The tazza that Denon describes in the storerooms of the Louvre is generic rather than specific; but the clock that Jacques Amalric gives to Augustine as a wedding gift is the description of one in Kansas City, Missouri, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the seventeenth-century Florentine cabinet with pietra dura panels of Orpheus and the beasts mounted in ebony that Napoleon commandeers for Marie-Louise’s jewels is the description of one in Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Institute of Arts; the chandelier described in the Amalric home in 1815 is based on one of a slightly later date in Los Angeles, California, J. Paul Getty Museum.

  Nothing is known about Augustine’s artistic training, so I have invented it. I have never seen one of her paintings and am not sure whether or where any of them survive. Thus I based the description of her 1814 Salon entry, Coquilles peints sur vélin [Scallop shells painted on vellum] on a marvelous still life of shells and corals by Anne Vallayer-Coster (Paris, Musée du Louvre).

  Augustine and Louise Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont were close friends, and the latter is sometimes described as her companion.3 Through her husband she would surely have known Géricault, who was only a year or two younger than she, and Madame Larrey and Madame Benoist. Madame Benoist did encourage other women artists, but the description of her studio and its rose scents is entirely imaginary. I had Augustine accompany Gros to Brussels to confront Jacques-Louis David so she could say to his unappreciative teacher what I have long wished to say to him. (In fairness to David, however, I should note that he in fact kept his painting abilities to the end of his life.)

  We do not know whether Augustine ever met Napoleon and Joséphine, but one can’t write a novel about the era without their presence. The ministers of the Imperial household complained that Denon held back treasures they wished to place in the palaces of France, so I made the Louvre storerooms the setting for her meeting with the Emperor. Similarly, the scene in which she participates in the painting of Joséphine’s 1809 portrait in the Indian shawl dress is imagined, although the painting is real.

  The Gros marriage did not produce any children, but Gros fathered a daughter, Françoise-Cécile, with his mistress Françoise Simonier. Augustine was not happy about this. As described in the novel, he left the bulk of his estate to the child and made his wife one of the executors of his will. Understandably, Augustine was not happy about that either.

  I borrowed the character of Maître Derville, the lawyer, from Fabrice Luchini’s marvelous portrayal of this Balzac character in the 1994 film Le Colonel Chabert.

  All Toulouse characters are fictional. The description of the city circa 1840 is as accurate as I could make it. Gros’s family came from Toulouse and Augustine gave several of his paintings to the Musée des Augustins, but we do not know that she ever visited that city. I chose it as the setting for the writing of my book because it is a place I love and doing so gave me a convenient excuse to revisit and research it and extol its beauties. I hope I have done it justice.

  1 Jean-Baptiste Delestre, Gros, sa vie et ses ouvrages. Paris, first edition, 1845; second edition, 1867.

  2 J. Tripier-Lefranc, Histoire de la Vie et de la Mort du Baron Gros. Paris: Jules Martin, 1880.

  3 When Augustine died, she published a memorial pamphlet, “Notice sur Mme Augustine Dufresne, veuve d’Antoine-Jean Gros, le peintre de Jaffa, née à Paris le 10 octobre 1789, ravie à sa famille et à ses amis le 5 janvier 1842” (Paris: H. Fournier, 1842)

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this novel and bringing it to publication has been a long process, and many people have given me help and encouragement along the way. My thanks go first and foremost to my editor at Áccent Press, Jay Dixon, who saw the potential in my story and helped me to polish it into publication-worthy form. I have benefited greatly from the advice of those who read the manuscript all or in part in its earlier stages: Judith and Ron Akehurst, Charissa Bremer-David, Peter Briggs, Susanne Dunlop, Barbara Furbush, Cathy Gaines, Karen Glow, Joy Hartnett, Barb Head, Joyce Holmen
, Ian Kennedy, Mary Sebastian, Marilyn Stokstad, Susan Tipton, and the members of Brian Shawver’s fiction class at The Writers Place, Kansas City, Missouri. Joyce Gilhooley provided hospitality in Paris during the initial research; the staff of the Musée du Vieux Toulouse assisted with research for the sections set in that city; and Amelia Nelson assisted with research for the chapter set in Rome. The members of the Border Crimes Chapter of Sisters in Crime have cheered me through revisions and the publication process.

  Profound thanks are also due the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest of 2008, which selected this book as a semifinalist under its working title The Artist’s Widow. This gave me the encouragement to continue to pursue publication in the years since then.

  Biography

  American museum educator, grant writer, and lecturer. Ann Marti Friedman has published numerous articles on art and artists in various academic journals. This is her first novel and is based on extensive research. It was a semi-finalist on the 2008 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest, though has been substantially re-written since then. She is currently working on a murder mystery set amongst the artists of 1670’s Paris.

  www.annmartifriedman.com