Sofie & Cecilia

by Katherine Ashenburg

  The Scandinavian artists in Grez were a raucous group, famous for their epic toasts and parties that went on all night. Nils Olsson had returned to Paris, about an hour away by train, where people said he lived with a French woman, one of his models. But he spent most of the spring and summer in Grez, where he was the feverish centre of the Scandinavians, full of practical jokes and comic projects. He was always sketching their dinners, their trips to the river to bathe, their painting excursions. When they had a spur-of-the-moment fancy dress ball, he drew Sofie costumed as a Moroccan woman on her way to the well. She had draped herself in a bedsheet, with one shoulder bare, found a pair of hoop earrings in the market and begged a jug from her landlady, which she put on her head. With her dark hair and eyebrows, it was almost convincing—her striped stockings and court shoes were the only false notes.

  Sofie suspected that underneath the high spirits, there was another Nils Olsson. He supported himself as an illustrator, but his career as a serious artist had stalled. He had never been awarded a travelling scholarship from the Academy, the most important mark of its approval. Nor had any of his paintings, other than a workaday portrait of a friend, been chosen for the Paris Salon. The studio-based oil painting he had learned at the Academy was passé in France, where the critics were championing realistic watercolours of contemporary scenes, painted out of doors. At first, Nils had resisted. What serious painter would throw over the classical subjects? How could watercolours compete with oils? But eventually, like everybody at Grez, he attempted the new style.

  Grez, 20 May 1888

  Dear Mamma and Pappa,

  Thank you so much for the jam and the coffee. How sweet it is to taste the good old Swedish lingonberries again, although I have to confess that I have become devoted to the French marmalade we eat at the pension. Mme Desmoulins makes it herself and I would ask her for the recipe, except that I doubt we could get Seville oranges in Hallsberg. Watching Madame’s face when I present her with the coffee beans will be a picture, as the French pride themselves on their excellent, very strong coffee!

  You will remember the Stockholm illustrator Nils Olsson, whose sketch I sent you, of me running upstairs in the pension in my sheet after a bathe in the river. The other night, some of the painters had an informal exhibition of their latest work, in which he showed the most wonderful picture. It is everything we were not taught at the Academy. No hero from history dressed and posed in a studio, but a peasant boy, homely, resting in a field in his crumpled grey jacket. He sits, under a moody sky, next to a ragged thistle bush bigger than he is. He has tilted his face so that only one huge ear shows, and the sun shines through it, turning it red. The only other dash of colour is a clump of poppies in the far distance.

  Some of the others compared it to a painter we all admire, Jules Bastien-Lepage. Bastien-Lepage painted a peasant girl in a similar setting and called it Poor Fauvette. And yes, it is very fine, but the title tells it all: it has a degree of sentimentality that is completely absent from Olsson’s picture. Bastien-Lepage’s girl is very pretty. Wrapped in a rough piece of cloth, she wears cast-off shoes that are far too big for her. Olsson’s boy on the other hand is so natural, he is not pretty and his jacket is filthy, but you can feel the truth with which it is painted. I could not stop looking at it. Finally, so as not to hurt the feelings of the other painters, I forced myself to move away and look at their work.

  As for me, I keep on with the same small subjects, a girl dressed for her first communion, a mother knitting while she watches her baby son. But now, like Nils Olsson but without half his talent, both painter and subjects have gone outdoors. I work, as the French say, en plein air!

  Thank you, Mamma, but there is no need to send the faille suit or the dinner dress. I have my blue serge suit and the brocade dinner dress with me, and that is more than a hard-working art student will have occasion to wear. What I do need is another painting smock, but I will get that here in Grez.

  Much love to all of you, and don’t forget Mus in that,

  your Sofie

  The artists in the little colony included a young man from Glasgow named John Lavery. He painted Sofie in a hammock overlooking the patchy river. She was half-turned out of it, leaning to pick up a cup of tea from a little rush-seated stool, so that half her face was hidden by the hammock.

  “There,” he said, pulling the gold bangle on her wrist slightly downward. “I’d like that to show a little more.”

  Born in Ireland, Lavery was dark and not terribly tall, with a chiselled face and an attractive ease. He stared at his canvas, then at her. Her big brown skirt filled the entire width of the hammock; one hand held the hammock’s web for support while the other reached for the blue-and-white cup. He made a minute adjustment of the cup on the stool.

  “That’s very good, there, the way you are holding the hammock. How is your own work going?”

  “Oh fine, I suppose.”

  He looked inquiring, so she had to say more.

  “For years I wanted to work out of doors, and now I see the difficulties—the changing skies, the weather that doesn’t follow our schedule, the work of finishing the rough sketch later in the studio. But I am much happier with the change, and Monsieur Lavartin is a great help with getting the right buildup of colour.”

  “Have you finished the picture of the little goose-girl?”

  “Not quite. It’s strange, but no matter how artless or unselfconscious you think a person is, the act of posing can make them look so unnatural. That’s what is happening with my goose-girl.”

  Lavery said nothing, but she knew he was listening while he added some black to her brown skirt. She wished she could think of something else to say to him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the muddy, grey-brown river. She felt the twist of her back, such a cruel pose to hold, and an unfamiliar stirring in her body. Was it the pressure of the hammock around her hips and buttocks, or Lavery’s intent, unblinking attention? To cover her confusion, she gave a small laugh and continued.

  “The goose-girl reminds me of what my mother said, when I was trying to explain this new kind of painting to her. She said, ‘That’s interesting, dear, but I still don’t see why it’s so much better to paint peasants harvesting turnips than the trial of Socrates.’”

  They smiled at the naivete of parents.

  Still darkening her skirt, he asked, “And what is it like for a woman artist in Sweden these days?”

  A woman artist in Sweden. She had never thought about that, which was embarrassing. If he had asked Hanna Hirsch, she would have had a great deal to say about women artists in Sweden.

  “I…I don’t really know how it is for them. I suppose I’ll find out when I return.”

  Lavery called the picture Tea by the River. Once it was finished, Nils Olsson began to claim the seat next to her when they sketched out of doors, and she did not pose for Lavery again.

  One day, she and Nils painted a peasant woman in a vegetable patch, carrying a large basket. Nils drew her in profile, her head wrapped in a white cloth, standing near some pumpkins. Sofie drew her from the back, wearing the same cropped jacket, gathered skirt and clogs. Nils refined his in the studio, the orange pumpkins the only bright note in the blue-green-grey palette. She never got around to finishing hers, so it stayed sketchy and impressionistic. There were trees in the distance, under a moody sky, and no pumpkins. It was overcast and gloomy, like Grez in general. But her painting was good. Even she could see that it was good.

  She fell in love with Nils Olsson’s paintings before she fell in love with him. After the boy by the thistle bush, he painted a stooped old man leaning on his stick, and sisters picking pears in an orchard. Compared with the slow tedium of oils, the speed that watercolours demanded suited him and his paintings had a warmth that was never maudlin.

  About the painter, Sofie took more time. She watched his manic enthusiasms and his occasional absences when melancholy overtook him. The other Scandinavians told her that he had grown up in one of
Stockholm’s slums, carrying water and chopping firewood as a small boy to add to the family’s pitiful income. His father was an angry, unpredictable labourer who disappeared periodically. His mother took in laundry to support the family.

  It was flattering to be singled out as the one he teased most and the one he sat next to when a group went out sketching or painting. Without ever seeming to put down his brush or pencil, he kept up a joking commentary about her work, her dirty smock and her snub nose. He filled the margins of his paper with cartoons of her, big-eyed, “potato-nosed” as he called it, with ears and curls sticking out. The other women told her, “Nils Olsson likes you,” and she pretended to disagree. But she liked hearing it.

  She saw there was some need under his bravado that she might or might not want to meet, but she never knew whether she gave in to him in spite of that or because of that. Years later, she thought, I was right to resist. And probably right to surrender.

  * * *

  —

  Her father saved the letter in which Nils asked for her hand, and gave it to her.

  Grez, 30 September 1888

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Falkner,

  I am a man and I love your daughter. That is the important part. I am also an artist, and will work all my life to support Sofie. Our dearest wish is for your blessing.

  Yours,

  Nils Olsson

  Her father responded by saying that was all he needed to know. He added that Sofie had known what was best for herself since she was a little girl.

  For her part, Sofie felt sure that her father had made some discreet inquiries about Nils, and was more or less satisfied. Probably he was pretending to be more easygoing than he actually was.

  Although they agreed to the engagement, her parents wanted her to continue with her plan of studying for a second year in France, this time in Paris. The art “academies” in Paris sounded impressive, but by now Sofie realized that often they were nothing more than a retired model who would rent a big room, hire a younger model and put a label on the door, the Academy So-and-So. Anyone could pay a fee and come and draw the model. Once a week, a teacher would appear and criticize the work. The Scandinavian students agreed that the Colarossi studio was the best. Sofie and another Swedish woman, Julia Nyman, moved in together in a room on the Rue Vavin, and painted at the Colarossi studio.

  When Sofie was learning English at school, she had read Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Writing at the end of the eighteenth century, Miss Wollstonecraft had been struck by the liberty given to engaged couples in Sweden. Women passed from the reign of their fathers to the reign of their husbands, she wrote, with that one important intermission. Engaged women had a freedom they would never know again, and their parents were deliberately blind to the intimacies of the couple.

  Miss Wollstonecraft’s account was still controversial in Sweden, where middle-class parents defended the reputations of their daughters. But now, almost a century after she wrote them, Miss Wollstonecraft’s ideas had a new currency. Sofie and her friends debated them while they painted.

  One Saturday, as the spring sun tried fitfully to break through Paris’s grey skies, a few of them took a local train to the nearby countryside. They set up their easels overlooking an apple orchard.

  “Objecting to intimacies before marriage for women is irrational,” Emma Dahlberg insisted while she frowned in concentration at the colours on her palette. “Men have always been permitted sexual freedom, so why not women?”

  That was bold, but Emma often was bold, at least in words. Still, Sofie doubted, privately, that Emma put her theory into practice.

  “Logically, I don’t disagree,” Dorotea Jonasen said. She was trying to get a man who was pruning one of the apple trees into her painting, but he moved too quickly as he cut dead and low-hanging branches. She could not think and chase the man on paper at the same time, so she put down her brush. “But it doesn’t feel right. I will not avail myself of liberties until I am married.”

  Sofie and Emma exchanged glances; they suspected otherwise.

  Privately, Sofie was more concerned about Nils’s attitude. Apparently he had not read Mary Wollstonecraft. He kissed Sofie’s hand, her cheek and—but not for long—her mouth. She wondered why he did not make love to her. Perhaps he wanted her to be more innocent and inaccessible than she was to make her seem as different as possible from his mistress. Sofie had never discussed the mistress’s existence with him, but Nils’s living arrangements in Paris had been common knowledge in Grez. Of course, that was over now.

  There came a Sunday in May when the weather was like summer. Sofie had invited Nils to lunch without mentioning that Julia was going away for the day with a sketching group, to the forest at Fontainebleau. When he arrived, the table in their little sitting room was set for two. Sole véronique, she told him. She had bought a cookbook at one of the bookstalls along the Seine. The grapes, as it turned out, were a bit sodden and the fish drier than she had hoped. But he was full of praise, and took a second helping. After the cheese, he stood to stretch his legs. She stood too, and kissed him.

  “All that Chablis has made me sleepy. Let’s just lie down for a while and close our eyes. Julia won’t be home until the evening.”

  Nils looked startled, but she took his hand and led him to her bed, behind a tablecloth she had pinned to a clothesline. The Chablis helped. Her heart was beating like a church bell, in a way that would have been alarming except that everything seemed to be happening at a distance from where they stood. Almost casually, she loosened her blouse. Unfastening her stays, as always, took some doing and, laughing, she asked for his help. She pinched in her sides while he freed the hooks and eyes. His hands trembled.

  Afterwards, she lay on her back, watching the afternoon sun light up the jacquard pattern on the tablecloth. Nils lay curled around her with his face in her shoulder. The wine had worn off and she hurt, which she hoped was temporary. She was aware of two smells. One that came from her underarms was like celery salt, an essential ingredient when Alma, the cook at home, made meatballs. It was sweat, she realized, after some initial uncertainty—she had not had much occasion in her life to produce sweat. The other smell combined something yeasty with a tinge of bleach. It was a clean smell, that seemed to be coming from the sheets. Nils cupped his hand on her side and said, “My angelic girl, you are so kind. So, so kind.”

  Kind. It was not the word she would have chosen, but she judged that the afternoon had been a success.

  * * *

  —

  When he told her, it did not seem outrageous. Or even particularly momentous. She didn’t actually take much notice, perhaps because, like almost everything he said in those days, it was so loving. His look, as he said it, of being delighted with her—that was the main thing. She heard him saying, “Your paintings are very fine, Sofie. Quite…accomplished. But, of course, with our marriage, that chapter closes.” Really, she couldn’t remember the exact way he put it. She understood his meaning, that she would not be painting once they were married. But all the talk was a kind of interruption, a noise that threatened to distract her from what she thought of as the real story. How they were going to marry, going to have their own place, do things as they liked, be together forever, be enchanted with each other. That was what mattered. She didn’t put it to herself that, after all, it wouldn’t be impossible to live without painting. Because even to think that way made it sound more important than it was.

  When her teacher had told Dorotea that a married woman would not continue painting, Sofie, along with the other Scandinavian women, had enjoyed a bit of indignant huffing. But it was easier to discount a middle-aged teacher than your fiance, especially when Nils’s attitude seemed somehow flattering. He wanted Sofie to concentrate on him and the family that was to be, and that was romantic.

  Still, she could not follow him in all his opinions about women artists. At dinner one night in the Hotel Laurent, the ar
tists’ talk turned to Rosa Bonheur, the French artist most famous for her large paintings of cows and horses. Nils laughed so hard he almost choked when he talked about Mlle Bonheur applying to the police for the necessary permission to wear trousers while sketching at the stockyards. His friend Holger slapped him on the back. They had gone through this story a dozen times, but it never failed to convulse Nils and at least a few of the other men.

  “And with her hair cut as short as a man’s,” Holger added, getting into the well-worn spirit of the exercise. “When you saw her in her black trousers and coat, you didn’t know it was a woman!”

  “Well, some sort of a woman…”

  There were appreciative snickers all round, some a little mechanical by now. Most of the women looked as amused as the men. Sofie kept her face blank. If Nils thought Rosa Bonheur was ridiculous, perhaps she was, in some way that escaped Sofie. But she did not find Rosa Bonheur’s paintings funny, and she would not pretend that she did. She concentrated on remembering one of them, a wonderful crowd of horses at a livestock auction.

  Hanna Hirsch was having none of it. “She painted animals because the French Academy refused to let her study human anatomy,” Hanna said, more forcefully than necessary because everyone knew that but was choosing to ignore it. “Refused her out of prudishness. At the stockyards, which could turn the stomachs of many men, some perhaps around this very table, she could study all the anatomy she needed. And who in her right mind would drip her skirts in the blood and offal that litters the floor there? You could skate on the blood. Of course she wore heavy boots and old trousers.”