‘How long have you been in Paris?’
‘I arrived yesterday.’
‘And what kind of work are you looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gerda said.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
The blonde looked at Gerda’s face. ‘You poor love. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?’
Gerda felt butterflies in her stomach. ‘I’ll find something.’
The blonde continued regarding her, so that Gerda began to blush. The blonde seemed to decide something. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘can you sit still for hours on end?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Good. I have a friend; he lives over on avenue de Clichy. He’s a painter, but he earns his money by doing posters and portraits. He might be able to use a face like yours.’
Gerda smiled.
‘He works early in the mornings. We’ll go and have a word with him, shall we?’
‘Thank you,’ Gerda said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Alice. What’s yours?’
‘Margaretha, but people call me Gerda.’
The tram signal sounded as it crossed place Pigalle. Alice pointed out the Moulin Rouge, which she had visited quite often. ‘You wouldn’t believe what goes on in there – it’s a madhouse,’ she said.
At place de Clichy, they got off and walked together up avenue de Clichy. They passed a cemetery. Gerda shivered in the cold. The city was shrouded in fog. The men and women walking on pavements looked thin and unearthly. Above them, fixed to the side of a building, a poster loomed in the mist. It was advertising the Palais de Glace on the Champs-Élysées. A woman with a figure like an hourglass glided on knife-thin skates.
Alice told her that her painter friend was quite famous in certain circles as a colourist. She emphasised the word ‘colourist’. He had once told her that Apollinaire admired his landscapes, but Alice didn’t know who Apollinaire was. ‘Do you?’ she asked. Gerda shook her head.
They stopped at a huge apartment building. Alice pressed a button and, after a few minutes, the door flew open. Gerda saw a tanned man with dark shiny hair and stubble. He was wearing a white vest underneath his black jacket. He smiled and threw his arms up when he saw Alice.
‘Oh, ma petite,’ he said and kissed Alice on either cheek. ‘Ça va?’
‘Octave, this is Gerda, from Amsterdam. Gerda, this is Octave Guillomet.’
‘Hello,’ Gerda said.
Guillomet studied her face for a moment, then waved his arms. ‘Come on, it’s too cold to stand here all day. Come inside.’
He led the way upstairs, to a large room on the second floor. Huge windows at either end let in acres of light. There were paintings stacked against the wall, two easels with half-finished paintings on them. Brushes and blue and green paints lay scattered on the worktops.
‘As you can see, I’m very busy, but please, sit down.’ Guillomet pointed Gerda to a chair. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘She came to Paris looking for work,’ Alice said.
Guillomet nodded. ‘I see. What kind of work?’
Gerda felt his gaze on her. This man was waiting for an answer, but Gerda didn’t want to appear uncertain. She could tell him the truth, or she could earn his sympathy with a lie.
‘I don’t know. Anything. My husband, a colonel, died in the Indies and left me with two children to look after,’ she said.
Guillomet tutted and shook his head. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I paint posters for theatrical productions – Messalina, Carmen, that type of thing. Are you interested in doing some modelling for me?’
‘Yes, very much,’ Gerda smiled.
‘Good.’ He looked at Gerda’s face. ‘Sit up straight for a moment.’ He studied her posture, stroking his chin and nodding slowly. ‘Fine, now take off your clothes, please.’
‘What?’ Gerda said. ‘I thought you meant my head and shoulders!’
‘Agh.’ Guillomet threw his hands up in impatience. ‘I don’t need models for that and anyway, the pay is terrible. I would rather not do it either, you know? I would rather do my landscapes all day, but there is no money in that. I can see you have a good figure, but I need to see you naked. If you’re not interested, then please, I’m very busy.’
Gerda looked at Alice. ‘It’s all right, Gerda,’ she said.
Gerda stood up. Both Alice and Guillomet watched her impassively, as though they were waiting for a bus. She began unlacing her boots. The concrete floor was cold through her stockings. She unbuttoned her jacket and laid it on the chair, then removed her chemise. Underneath was a bodice, so old and worn that Gerda was ashamed. They waited without speaking. Gerda unfastened her skirt, underskirt and petticoat. She laid them on the chair, unrolled her stockings and finally removed her knickers.
When she was naked, she stood with her arms by her sides. Goosepimples formed on her skin in the cold studio. Guillomet’s eyes lingered over her body.
‘Yes, you have a good figure, except for your breasts – they’re too flabby and pendulous. I can use you, but only in costume.’
Gerda’s cheeks burned. She felt like a cow at market.
Guillomet looked at her, waiting for an answer. ‘Well?’ he said.
Gerda looked at him. How else would she earn money for her food and lodging as easily as this? When she realised that she had no other real choice, her gaze became cool and uninvolved. ‘Yes, for the sake of the children,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said; ‘you can get dressed now.’
7
Les Affiches
In 1798, Aloys Senefelder invented a process by which many prints could be obtained from a single design drawn on a stone surface. A back-to-front outline was drawn in black and the areas to be printed filled in with inks. The remaining areas were made ink-repellent. He called his process ‘lithography’ and, during the 1850s, it was used to create a new form of advertising: the large, illustrated colour poster.
The first posters were rather crude – printed in one or two colours on tinted paper. Gradually, though, the process became more sophisticated so that, by 1890, successive stones of the primary colours (red, yellow and blue) were used, followed by a fourth stone of transparent tints, made up from the complementary colours (green, violet and orange), which gave the poster a more complex colour make-up. The theory of complementary colours had recently been devised and popularised by the Impressionists and Pointillists.
Illustrated posters had their heyday at the turn of the century, when the streets of Paris were littered with them, advertising all manner of things: operas and opéras bouffes, ballets, the Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge, skating rinks and the Cirque d’Hiver, pantomimes, masked balls, touring troupes and minstrel shows, the Jardin de Paris and the Musée Grévin, department stores such as the Grand Bon Marché and Halle aux Chapeaux, bookshops, magazines and periodicals, newspapers and the serialised novels of Hugo and Zola, chicory, jam, Spanish chocolate, Indian syrup, Dubonnet’s quinquina and Pernod’s absinthe, pastilles, glycerine toothpaste, Sarah Bernhardt’s poudre de riz (rice powder), Roger & Gallet soaps, perfumes, hair restorer, matches and Saxoléine lamp oil.
The mass production and wide circulation of these posters was a huge industry and many artists were courted by lithographic publishing houses for commissions. But although the quality of posters became ever better, it was still poor compared to the colour reproduction of painting. Renoir, Cézanne and Sisley were all approached by the publisher Vollard to draw coloured lithographs, but they refused, agreeing only to do the ‘black stones’ and leaving the colour to be added by the printer.
Toulouse-Lautrec, however, was an exception. The misshapen painter trawled the Montmartre underworld of bars and brothels for subjects, and his posters are among the most evocative of the era. The influence of Japanese prints – with their strong lines and solid forms – was very evident in his lithographs. He is now as famous for them as for his paintings. Indeed, his Moulin Rouge poste
rs are arguably more recognisable than any of his paintings.
There was one man, however, who lifted colour lithography to something more than mere advertising: Jules Chéret. In his life, he is known to have completed more than 880 posters, but probably did many more. Born in Paris in 1836, Chéret left school at thirteen to become a lithographer’s apprentice, during which time he lettered brochures, flyers and funeral announcements. He carried on his studies in London, where he designed book covers for the Cramer publishing house and floral designs for the Rimmel perfumery on Wigmore Street.
After travelling through Sicily, Malta and Tunisia, he returned to Paris and set up his own lithography studio with presses brought from London. He produced the first lithograph from his new studio in 1866, for an ‘enchantment’ in five acts called La Biche au bois. It was an enormous commercial success and from then on, Chéret earned his living by designing posters.
Chéret worked in a large room, stretched over a large stone, leaning on his left arm and drawing with his right hand. He would look at his own image in a cheval glass when checking for a movement or expression, and had to look constantly in another mirror to see the reversed illustration properly. His main references were Velázquez, Donatello, the Rubens paintings in the Louvre, which he visited every Sunday, and the Turner paintings he saw at the V & A Museum while he was in London.
Chéret’s output was formidable and no other artist came anywhere near the number of posters he produced. He entered a golden era in the 1890s, during which his posters were so common that they became synonymous with la belle époque. The laughing women he drew were called ‘Chérettes’. A song was even recorded about the singer’s yearning for a poster girl, described as ‘la fleur du paradis, danseuse de Chéret’. It was a huge hit.
Monet, Degas and Seurat were all open in their admiration of his work. A petition to have Chéret decorated was signed by Rodin and Massenet and, in 1890, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. In 1900, his eyesight began to fail and he was forced to stop his lithographs and work in much larger forms. He produced murals for the Préfecture in Nice, designed the curtains for the Musée Grévin and tapestries for Maurice Fenaille’s villa in Neuilly. In 1925, his eyesight failed him completely and he retired to Nice. He died there in 1932, aged ninety-six.
Throughout his career, Chéret also produced many drawings, pastels and oil paintings. In 1933, an exhaustive exhibition of this work was held at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Many were astonished by his ability as a fine artist.
8
Paris, 1904
Georges du Parcq was hot and agitated after climbing the hundreds of steps up to the Sacré Cœur, despite the chill in the morning air. Standing at the top of the steps, he straightened his jacket and overcoat. The streets were empty. Further up rue Lapin, a gendarme was standing outside a doorway. It was Jacques. Du Parcq got out his notebook and pencil and walked towards him. When Jacques saw him approaching, he raised his palm.
‘No one inside yet, Georges. How do you people get here so quickly?’
‘That’s our job, Jacques; what’s going on?’
‘A shooting. A man’s dead and the woman’s inside. The usual.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
‘Lieutenant Boileau.’
‘How long before I can eyeball?’
‘You’ll just have to wait like the others. When they get here.’
Du Parcq sighed and looked around for a café. There was one just opening further up the street. He looked at his pocket watch: twenty-five to seven. He looked up; the bruised clouds barely cleared the highest point of the Sacré Cœur.
‘A lovely morning, Jacques.’
‘No it’s not,’ the gendarme said; ‘it’s a shitty morning, Georges.’
‘Tut-tut. You should be more optimistic. I’ll be back.’
Georges du Parcq had been on Le Monde for three years, covering petty crimes and misdemeanours. He hated it – long hours spent all over the city gathering information on crimes that only merited a few lines and sometimes didn’t make the paper at all.
He should have been promoted to court cases months ago, but Gabert had been promoted instead. Now Gabert spent every day in the press gallery of the Justice Courts, taking long lunches and finishing early. What did he know? He hadn’t grafted on the provincial papers like du Parcq had – ten years in Nice and two years on Le Soir in Arcueil before joining Le Monde. He was tired of covering insignificant cases like this.
After drinking two express and smoking two cigarillos, du Parcq left the café and ambled back to the crime scene. Jacques was still there, more watchful this time as he kept an eye on the six or seven reporters who had arrived. All were younger than du Parcq and wore better suits. They chatted to each other while they waited.
Lieutenant Boileau came out of the apartment building and issued a statement. A woman had shot her lover and was being detained for questioning. Someone asked if there was another woman involved. Boileau said, ‘No comment.’ Someone else asked if the woman would be charged. ‘Probably,’ Boileau said and pushed past them. Du Parcq made his notes and lit another cigarillo. The other reporters drifted away to file their copy and make the lunchtime edition, but du Parcq stood quietly by, leaning against a wall and waiting.
The crime scene doctor arrived and went into the building. Fifteen minutes later, the doctor left, which meant that the shooting was probably an open-and-shut case. When he saw that Boileau was less busy, du Parcq approached him with one or two more questions but, as usual, received no replies he could use. Boileau was such a stickler. Du Parcq hung around and caught two of Boileau’s officers as they left the building. He asked them both if there was another woman involved. The first said he didn’t know, but the second said, ‘Of course; why else would a woman shoot her lover?’
‘Do you know anything about her? Good looking?’
‘By all accounts.’ The officer winked and walked away.
Du Parcq wrote notes for the basic outline of his story and was about to leave for the office when someone touched his arm. Standing by him was a woman with black hair and huge almond-shaped eyes.
‘Monsieur, are you from the newspapers?’ she said.
‘Yes, what can I do for you, madame?’
‘It’s about Suzette. We’re friends.’
‘Suzette? You mean the woman who shot her man?’
The woman nodded.
‘What’s her last name?’
‘Harrault. What’s going to happen to her?’
Du Parcq took a note of the name. ‘They’ll take her away and charge her. Why?’
‘Because I’m afraid it’s partly my fault.’
Du Parcq looked up. Her face was calm. ‘Oh really,’ he said, ‘and why is that?’
‘Pierre and I made love once.’
Du Parcq took in her sea-blue mousseline dress and black bonnet. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Gerda,’ she said.
‘Can I buy you a coffee, Gerda?’
‘Yes, certainly you can, monsieur.’
‘Good, follow me.’ Du Parcq checked to make sure no one was watching before he took her arm and led her to the café up the street.
When they were sitting down with a coffee each in front of them, du Parcq asked Gerda for a full account of the affair. Much to his delight, she was more than happy to comply.
She had met them both in a local bar one night, not long after Gerda had arrived in Paris a year ago. The bars in Montmartre are always friendly and the three of them had soon got talking. Suzette was petite and shy. She had said very little, but when she did say something, it was always very intimate. Gerda had liked her from the beginning and sensed they could become good friends. But most of the time Suzette was overshadowed by Pierre, who was a huge man with a deep voice.
They lived near Gerda’s lodgings and she began to see them regularly. They were always together, though not out of choice, but because Pierre seemed afraid to let Suzette out of his s
ight. Gerda had thought it was strange because Suzette didn’t strike her as the unfaithful type. But, she said, she understood that people could sometimes be nervous of that when there was perhaps no need to be. Du Parcq nodded. She had soon realised how belligerent and sarcastic Pierre was. He used to insult Suzette, but as far as Gerda knew, he had never hit her. It was a subtle battle, Gerda said, designed to undermine what little confidence Suzette had.
Then Gerda had begun noticing the compliments that Pierre threw her way when Suzette’s head was turned or when she had gone to the ladies’ room. At first, she hadn’t said anything, out of respect for Suzette, but Gerda had arrived in Paris without knowing anyone and was lonely. She had next to no money and couldn’t afford to leave Montmartre, so she was glad to meet these two people and, slowly, came to appreciate the attention Pierre paid her. He must have sensed this because, one night in a bar, he had put his hand on her knee and said he wanted to sleep with her. She had found Pierre attractive to look at, but she liked Suzette; so she took his hand off her knee and asked him to buy her a glass of white wine.
During all of this, she had been modelling for Guillomet, the famous artist, but the pay was terrible. She was trying to secure work as an Oriental dancer in the cabarets dansants, but no one was interested in Oriental dancing – they wanted acrobats, slapstick artistes or singers. She could see no way out of her predicament and there was no one to help her. One night, she was in her rooms worrying about how she would pay the next month’s rent when Pierre had called on her. He had gently stroked her hair as she told him her worries and she sought comfort in his kind words. They had made love. She had felt bad about it as soon as it was over and made Pierre promise not to tell Suzette. That had been two days ago and she must have found out, for now poor Suzette was in jail.
When Gerda had finished, he knew he had the story. In return, he told Gerda about a friend of his who might be able to help her secure work as a dancer. His friend, he explained, owned a museum devoted to the study of the Orient and its antiquities. He wrote down the address and telephone number for the offices of Le Monde and told her she should ring him in a fortnight, by which time he would have spoken to his friend. Gerda took the piece of paper and thanked him. What a charming smile, du Parcq thought. He could understand very well what had attracted Pierre. He paid for the coffees and said goodbye to Gerda.
The Red Dancer Page 5