In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art

by Sue Roe

  Despite their disenchantment with Paris, both Derain and Vlaminck had submitted work. Derain showed nine of the thirty paintings he had brought back from Collioure, including Vue de Collioure, a dazzling display of red roofs, deep-blue sea, white sails shimmering in the searing southern light. Vlaminck had been relatively restrained in his submissions, which consisted of five landscapes (including La Maison de mon père) which nevertheless marked him out as a ‘wild’, subjective colourist. Dismayed viewers might have counted themselves lucky to have been spared the figure paintings he produced that same year. The woman in Reclining Nude (1905), almost a grotesque, was clearly a whore. Splayed out against an abstract background, her cheekbones flushed red, eyes circled with green, face powdered as white as a clown’s but with a prominent black ‘beauty’ spot, she looks not just whorish but syphilitic. Even his interior, The Violoncellist at the Moulin de la Galette (1905), would have been more disconcerting to viewers than his landscapes. In it, he distilled the vitality of the popular dance hall into a close-up of the orchestra, evoked in thick bright dabs of paint in predominant yellow. The flowers on the podium, merged with the figure of the cellist, are almost abstract, their patterns blending into the background against the neck of the instrument. Highly decorative, wildly divisionist (though with brushstrokes more like Klimt’s than Signac’s), the painting is a riot of textured colour. Nonetheless, his landscapes were wild enough, the riverside walks along the banks of the Seine celebrated before him by the Impressionists transformed into vivid, eye-catching spectacles, alive with strong yellows, reds, purples and greens.

  As Derain put it some years later, ‘Fauvism was our ordeal by fire …’ His and others’ attempts to move beyond the techniques of Impressionism were not restricted to the bold, subjective use of colour; the artists were also aiming to express on canvas new ways of seeing. Looking back on his Fauvist phase some years later, Derain reflected:

  It was the era of photography. This may have influenced us, and played a part in our reaction against anything resembling a snapshot of life. No matter how far we moved away from things, in order to observe them and transpose them … it was never far enough. Colours became charges of dynamite. They were expected to discharge light. It was a fine idea, in its freshness, that everything could be raised above the real. It was serious, too. With our flat tones, we even preserved a concern for mass, giving for example to a spot of sand a heaviness it did not possess, in order to bring out the fluidity of the water, the lightness of the sky … The great merit of this method was to free the picture from all imitative and conventional contact.

  The result was that figures and shapes became extended, even distorted, anticipating by some years the first movements towards abstraction.

  The emphasis on colour as a form of attack seemed to belong largely to Derain and Vlaminck. Certainly, it bypassed Picasso, whose contact with the two at this stage was sporadic, and primarily social; in the bars and cafés of Montmartre, they exchanged banter rather than ideas. The need to find a way of moving beyond the ‘snapshot’ model was another matter; that problem, Picasso would soon begin to find his own ways of addressing. In the meantime, he remained inscrutable. Although they no longer saw themselves as Matisse’s disciples, it was not yet the moment for Vlaminck and Derain to move in on Picasso’s gang.

  That summer, Vlaminck had been one of the first to make a casual discovery that was to have a profound and lasting influence on virtually all the painters in Montmartre. One hot, sunny afternoon, he had been painting the barges on the Seine at Argenteuil. At the end of the day, he went to a bistro frequented by bargees and coal heavers. While he was drinking his white wine and soda, he noticed, on the shelf behind the bar between the bottles of Picon and vermouth, two African sculptures. The tale was endlessly told and retold over the years, amended and/or embellished with different details depending on whose version was being recounted. (According to Braque, there were three statuettes, two from Dahomey, a former African colony situated in what is now Benin, streaked with red, yellow and white, the third black, from the Ivory Coast.) The owner agreed to part with them in exchange for a round of drinks. ‘Was it because I had been working in the blazing sun for two or three hours? Or was it the particular state of mind I was in that day? Or was it the connection with certain experiments I was constantly preoccupied with? Whatever it was … those three statuettes caught my attention. I instinctively realized their potential. They revealed Negro art to me’ – so went another version. As told by Vlaminck himself in his autobiography, the story is more straightforward. He made no particular claim to having discovered anything especially significant; when he first saw them, the sculptures had inspired in him ‘the same feeling of wonder, the same profound feeling of humanity’ as the puppets in the coconut shy at the fairs he had visited in his youth.

  Soon afterwards, he acquired more examples, from a friend of his father who, when Vlaminck showed him the statues, said he had some himself; his wife was always threatening to discard them. Invited to his home, Vlaminck left with a large white mask and two figures from the Ivory Coast. He showed them to Derain, who was immediately fired up by them: He … offered him twenty francs … fifty … He took the mask away and hung it on the wall in his studio … When Picasso and Matisse saw it in Derain’s studio they were dumbfounded, too.

  Where did these particular examples come from? Were they left-over exhibits from the 1900 World Fair, which had brought so many examples of colonial art to the French metropolis? In around 1905, Iberian sculptures went on display for the first time at the Louvre, but, in general, they were still regarded as having no particular value. They normally turned up in bric-a-brac and pawn shops, brought back from the colonies by sailors or servants, as Vlaminck’s probably had been. During the next few years, they would become the talk of Montmartre, particularly once they were brought to the attention of Matisse, and, soon afterwards, Picasso. (This predates the ‘discovery’ of African sculptures in 1920 by the British artist and critic Roger Fry, and his article ‘Negro Carvings’, by fifteen years.) Examples of complete plastic freedom, for Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso and Matisse they were simply a progression of their preoccupation with acrobats and clowns; for Picasso, in particular, not so much the abandonment of the Rose Period (which Fernande nicknamed ‘the acrobat period’) as the recognition of another attempt to liberate in paint unmediated human feeling – primal, totemic, profoundly expressive depictions of what it really means to be human.

  • • •

  Matisse showed only two works at the Salon d’Automne. He had planned to submit one of his divisionist-influenced paintings of the port at Collioure, Port d’Avall, but on the way back to Paris he had stopped off in his home town of Bohain and shown the new work to his mother. She said, ‘That’s not painting,’ whereupon Matisse slashed the canvas with a knife – his clearest expression of frustration with divisionism, from which he now finally began to detach himself. As far as he was concerned, Collioure had been a disappointing, unproductive interlude; his prospects as an artist had hardly improved since the dark years of his wife’s parents’ public downfall. In place of his view of the harbour, he showed La Fenêtre ouverte, painted from the window of his lodgings at the Café Olo above the port, his first major work depicting a scene viewed through an open window, a format he would often use in subsequent years. The view of boats on the water, red sails rhyming with both the flower pots inside the window and the shutters thrown open on the scene, is strongly evoked in bold blocks of colour. Broad bands of colour also form the frame, which itself becomes an element of the picture, so that the viewer is looking both at and through the window. In later years, this painting came to be seen as the announcement of a dramatic new development in Matisse’s work, becoming regarded as one of his central masterpieces of the period.

  Matisse, however, was not satisfied with it. He wanted another piece to send to the exhibition, so with just a few days to spare he dashed off a startling portrait of Amélie wearing a
n elaborate multicoloured hat heaped with fruit and flowers, Madame Matisse in a Green Hat. It was as if the deep emotion he had been forced to suppress all summer – even, indeed, since the events of 1902 – now finally found expression. Seated and twisting round to face the viewer, her arm draped across the arm of her chair, her waist slashed by a scarlet belt, Amélie models her elaborate confection. She wears a dark dress with lace sleeves and holds a white fan decorated with flowers, like the Catalan women. She does not smile. Her mouth is turned down, her eyes are dull; her face, in stark contrast to the vividness of her hat, is dead white. In a gesture Matisse had used before in the painting he called The Green Line, a livid green line on her forehead, just above her brows, emphasizes her pallor. Matisse has put her back where she was before their summer in Collioure, as a modiste for her aunt Nine. Their prospects of success, happiness or even security had remained unimproved since she had been forced to give up her hat shop. Amélie knows it. She swings around to face the viewer, as if to say, ‘Alors?’ She is a dynamic, active participant in the subtly arresting drama of the picture, a defiant, rather than alluring model. Although its impact was shocking, the painting is exquisitely rendered, with flourishes of variegated colour, beautiful in its dynamism.

  These two works by Matisse (both submitted too late to appear in the catalogue) were as subversive and high voltage, in their different ways, as anything being shown by Vlaminck or Derain, although Vollard, for one – still wistfully nostalgic for those shades of grey – was unimpressed. ‘Matisse has been a disappointment to those who like an artist to stick to the same manner all along,’ he lamented. ‘Forsaking those greys that please his admirers so much, he suddenly turned to the most brilliant colours.’ According to him, the painting had also put the president of the Salon d’Automne, Monsieur Jourdain, on his guard. Though the president wished to appear tolerant of the new painting, he could not be seen to be too openly breaking with academic tradition, and he had begged the jury not to accept Matisse’s only submission, insisting that their refusal could only be in the interests of Matisse himself. He was, however, overruled. ‘Poor Matisse!’ he had apparently groaned, ‘I thought we were all his friends here!’ He may have been genuinely concerned for Matisse’s reputation for political reasons, on grounds of the painting’s somewhat unfortunate subject matter, since the hat shop Amélie had been forced to relinquish had been set up with her parents’ disgraced employers’ backing and the story had received wide coverage in the national press. Or perhaps his objections were purely aesthetic: by any standards, in both colouration and treatment of the subject, the painting was shocking, and it was indicative of the general tone of the room, as critic Louis Vauxcelles described it in his review of the exhibition. At the centre of the hall were two academic sculptures. They stood out, as Vauxcelles famously reported, each like ‘a Donatello among the wild beasts’. The viewing public was singularly dismayed; and this time viewers included Matisse’s potential rivals. Each morning ‘long lines of revolutionaries [came] pouring down from Montmartre’, including, of course, Picasso and his friends. Unlike the viewers and critics, however, they evidently realized they were in the presence of a powerful work of art. It was noted that Picasso, in particular, ‘felt he had been decidedly outflanked’.

  Matisse’s luck was about to change. Shortly after the close of the exhibition, he received a telegram. It shocked him so much Amélie thought he had been taken ill. Leo Stein and his sister, Gertrude, were offering three hundred francs (two hundred less than the asking price, the bargaining tactic normally recommended by the Salon Committee) for Madame Matisse in a Green Hat. Matisse was ready to rush out and accept their offer; Amélie persuaded him to hold his nerve and demand the full asking price. They did not have long to wait before Leo agreed to the purchase.

  Leo Stein had reflected for a while before urging his brother, Michael, to buy the painting. Once his decision was made, however, he became hugely excited by their new acquisition, particularly when, shortly afterwards, he met Matisse. He now became embarrassed at having hesitated for even a moment; had he known he was looking at ‘something decisive’, he assured everyone, he would have snapped it up at once. He had naturally recognized that the painting was ‘a tremendous effort’ on Matisse’s part, a thing brilliant and powerful, despite being ‘the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen’. In fact, he now realized, it was just what he had been waiting for; he had simply needed a few days to get used to ‘the unpleasantness of the putting on of the paint’. Matisse in person he found ‘really intelligent’ – high praise from Leo – and very attentive, which delighted him; he was thrilled to discover someone willing to listen to him discourse on the subject of art, since he was already in, as Gertrude put it, his ‘explaining’ period. The Matisses were now invited to evenings at the rue de Fleurus, where they could listen to Leo expounding at length and where they were introduced to the Steins’ elder brother, Michael, and his wife, Sarah, who adored Madame Matisse in a Green Hat and was keen to see more. In the company of viewers doubled up with scornful laughter before Matisse’s work, she had calmly judged it superb.

  After the exhibition had closed, Vollard paid a visit to Derain. He purchased his entire studio (except the copy of Ghirlandaio Derain had made in the Louvre – his first Fauvist experiment, using his own, free expressive colour scheme, which the artist refused to part with). He then visited Vlaminck, from whom he bought a hundred francs’ worth of paintings, astonishing the painter, who was delighted by this unexpected windfall. His third daughter had just been born, and the money paid for the confinement, but he could hardly believe it; he felt as if he had swindled Vollard, who, when he arrived in his car to collect the pictures, discovered that Vlaminck had added a huge table he had made, and just finished in time.

  In November, Vollard sent Derain to London to paint the views of the Thames that had earlier proved so successful for Monet. Derain loved the city, where he saw Turner’s work and discovered the British music halls, which delighted him. He also visited the Negro Museum (the ethnological collection of the British Museum), which he found ‘amazing, wildly expressive’. He returned wearing some extraordinary ‘English’ outfits, which his friends told him looked like dentist’s uniforms. When, some months later, Vollard sent him to London again, he returned with another, even more eye-catching look: ‘I got a green suit and a red jacket, and the most yellow shoes I could find, and a summer jacket – all white with chocolate and coffee-coloured quadrilles.’

  ‘You look as if you’re just back from Monte Carlo,’ remarked Picasso.

  8.

  New Tensions, New Opportunities

  In Montmartre that November, Leo Stein made another exciting discovery, this time in Sagot’s old pharmacy gallery. Presumably aware that the Steins had just purchased a painting by Matisse, Sagot asked the American if he had yet seen anything by a young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso. Leo said he had seen the works of one young Catalan painter (he did not reveal which one) – was Picasso like him? ‘No,’ replied Sagot. ‘This is the real thing.’ The painting he brought out to show Leo was Picasso’s depiction of a family of itinerant travellers seated on the ground with their chimpanzee. Sagot helpfully pointed out that the ape was looking at the child in the picture so lovingly that the animal must surely have been painted from life. Leo, who by his own account knew more about not only paintings but apes than anyone else, thought it unlikely. (Picasso later confirmed that Leo was right: he had drawn the ape from imagination.) Leo purchased the picture and shortly afterwards returned to Sagot’s, where Sagot showed him another, Girl with a Basket of Flowers, Picasso’s nude portrait of the little Montmartroise who sold flowers outside the Moulin Rouge. This time, Leo decided to take Gertrude to see the picture. They made their way up to the rue Laffitte and found Sagot in his shop, sucking on Zan, his favourite brand of licorice. When she saw the painting, Gertrude was not keen. The head and torso were pretty enough, she said, but the girl’s little ‘monkey’s’ feet she
found ugly. Very good, replied Sagot, we’ll cut off the feet. After some discussion, all agreed that that would be no solution. They prevaricated, then Leo returned by himself and bought it. Back in the rue de Fleurus, he delivered the news to Gertrude, who was eating her lunch. Now he had ruined her appetite, she told him.

  • • •

  On Tuesday evenings, Picasso and his friends habitually walked all the way from Montmartre, across the river to the Closerie des Lilas at the top of the boulevard Saint Michel. Weekly gatherings were run by Symbolist poet Paul Fort, who had left Montmartre that year to edit and manage (with André Salmon as secretary) the literary magazine Vers et prose. These events were always crowded with poets, painters, sculptors, journalists, musicians and artists young and old, from the most well-known figures to the most eccentric bohemians. Leo Stein had been going there since his days as a student at the Académie Julian. The talk ranged widely, from politics to banter. Fernande once overheard the wife of a poet tell Manolo’s hero, poet Jean Moréas, a regular habitué of salon and café life, that she had no intention of living beyond forty; she had much rather die before she got old. ‘But my dear lady,’ replied Moréas, the investigator whom nothing escapes’. (When, some years later, she published her memoirs, he had no trouble identifying himself as ‘‘your last day is imminent.’ The supply of drink was unlimited, and by midnight everybody was usually in a state of high excitement. Paul Fort, perpetually restless and agitated, would try to make himself heard above the noise; occasionally, his shrill voice would penetrate the din. Some nights, the talk ended only when the proprietor threw them out on to the street.