Paul-César Helleu (extrait) english version by Somogy éditions d'Art

Work carried out under the editorial and technical direction of Somogy Art Publishers Graphic design: Audrey Hette Technical production: Michel Brousset, Béatrice Bourgerie, Mélanie Le Gros Translation: Robert Conrath, Patty Hannock, Robert Skippon, Jonathan Slysa Copy editor: Rebecca Brite Editorial coordination: Christine Dodos-Ungerer assisted by Anne Malary

ISBN: 978-2-7572-0812-0 Copyright deposit: October 2014 Printed in Italy (European Union)

Paul-César

Helleu Directed by Frédérique de Watrigant

Contributors Paul-César Helleu is a collective work carried out under the direction of Frédérique de Watrigant, President of Les Amis de Paul-César Helleu (The Friends of Paul-César Helleu). The biography was written by the journalist Xavier Narbaïts. Other people who contributed to this work were: Texts • Sylvie Collignon, expert in old prints • Francesca Dini, PhD in Art History, expert on Giovanni Boldini and 19th century Italian painting. • Henrik Harpsoe, art historian, 18th century specialist • Manon Hasselmann, art historian, 19th century specialist • Aurore Le Pogam-Laloy, degree in modern literature, author • Côme Rémy, expert on 20th century objets d’art and furniture • Laure-Caroline Semmer, Professor of Art History at Institut d’études politiques Documentation • Astrid Barsacq • Hélène Carbonnel • Chloé Hiriart • Henrik Harpsoe • Manon Hasselmann Image resources • François Ramstein

Acknowledgements Lady Abdy; Julie Anderies; Cédric Angoujart, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest; Seth W. Armitage, Sotheby’s New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Victor Arwas (†); Mrs. Gretha Arwas and Katrina at Victor Arwas Gallery; B. Family; Gabriel Badéa-Paün; Jeri Bapasola, Blenheim Palace; Patrick, Bruno, Louis and Augustin de Bayser, Galerie de Bayser; Anne-Marie Bergeret, Musée Eugène Boudin, Musées de Honfleur; Maître Blanchet, Blanchet & Associés; Rachel Boyd, Richard Green Gallery; Charlotte Bowater, Guilded Ltd; Ralph Brauner; Rachel Brishoual, Musée des Arts décoratifs; Bruno Van den Broek d’Obrenan; Beverly Buenick, Christie’s; Jean M. Burks, Shelburne Museum; Elise Cambreling, Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne; Charles Cassuto; Tara A. Cerretani, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (MA); Guillaume Cerutti, Sotheby’s; Frank Cicurel, Sotheby’s; Alexis Chaloupka; Frédéric Chanoît; Raphaël Courant, Chauviré et Courant; Lynda Clark, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (UK); François Curiel, Christie’s; François Delestre, Stoppenbach et Delestre; Bernard Derroitte; Dr. Francesca Dini; Pietro Dini; Isabella Donadio, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (MA); Vincent Ducourau (†); Sophie Dufresne, Sotheby’s; JeanRené Etchegaray, mayor of Bayonne; Denise Faïfe, conservation manager, Musée d’Orsay; Roland Gaberthuel; Maître Antoine Godeau, Bergé & Associés; Richard Green; Jean Grenet, former deputy mayor of Bayonne; Heather A. Hales, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; Tara Hanks, Trinity House, London; Hammer Gallery; Sophie Harent, Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne; Hazlitt Gooden & Fox, London; Aimée de Heeren (†); Peter Huestis, National Gallery of Washington; Michel Grommen; Andrew Huber, Freeman’s Philadelphia; Achi Ikram, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen; Annette de Jaegher; Claire Jolivet, City of Vannes; Jennifer Johns, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Franck Knoery, Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg; Carlos de Laborde-Nogues; Karl Lagerfeld; Raphaële Laxan, Binoche et Giquello; Antoinette Le Fahler, Musée du VieuxChâteau, Laval; Françoise Le Saulx, Musée de la Cohue, Vannes; Iva Lisikewycz, Detroit Institute of Arts; François Lorenceau; Comte Armand-Ghislain de Maigret; Pierre Maillard, Art Institute of Chicago Images; Marie-Edmée de Malherbe, Sotheby’s Paris; Mallet Auction, Japan; Jackie Maman, Art Institute of Chicago Images; Mannaï Family; Brigitte Massé, Musée de Troyes; Pierre Michel, Société Octave Mirbeau; René Millet; Millon et Associés; Maria Isabel Molestina, Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Kevin Montague, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; Philippe de Montebello; Eliane More; William More; Caroline Moreaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Valence; Luciana Morgera; Mark Murray; Minneapolis Institute of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Nevill Keating, Tom Ash & Harriet Turney; Julie Novarese Pierotti, Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis; Claire O’Brien, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Elizabeth Oustinoff, Adelson Galleries, New York; Jose de Paula Machado; Pascale Pavageau, Sotheby’s Paris; Marie-Isabelle Pinet, Sotheby’s Paris; Lord Mark Poltimore, Sotheby’s Europe; Felipe Propper de Callejon; Paul Prouté, Galerie Prouté; Kevin Rajicic; Elizabeth Reluga, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Virginia Reynolds, Detroit Institute of Art; Valérie Richard, director, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes; Hélène Rihal-Camus, Christie’s Paris; Riszk Family; Marie-Christine Rivière, culture director, City of Bayonne; Jane Roberts, Jane Roberts Fine Arts; Élie and Liliane de Rothschild (†); Gabriel Rouart; Maître Sadde; Béatrice Salmon, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris; Laurent Salomé, Musée de Rouen; Dr. Jutta Schütt, Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Shelia Scott, Karl & Faber Kunstauktionen, Munich; Gérard Souham; Carey Stumm, New York Transit Museum; Judith M. Thomas, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Sylvie Tocci Prouté, Galerie Prouté; Marie-Caroline Van Herpen, Galerie Hopkins, Paris; Jacqueline Vanson, née Louis-Guérin; Dominique H. Vasseur, Columbus Museum of Art; Julie Vial, Christie’s London; Adriana Waite, Christie’s London; Helena Walker, Bonhams; Thibault de Watrigant; Françoise Westendorp; Deborah Wythe, Brooklyn Museum, New York. We wish to express our warmest gratitude to William More for his proofreading and his valuable advice. We also wish to extend our warm thanks to Maître Patrick de Watrigant for his invaluable assistance.

Table of Contents Foreword........................................................................................... 9 The Friends of Paul-César Helleu

Introduction.................................................................................... 10 Frédérique de Watrigant

THE LIFE OF PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU........................... 12 Xavier Narbaïts

From Brittany to Paris.................................................................... 15 Helleu the Impressionist, La Gare Saint-Lazare............................................... 20 Laure-Caroline Semmer

A Man of the World at Work........................................................... 29 In the Court of Robert de Montesquiou......................................................... 31 Francesca Dini

From Helleu to Monet: Les Cathédrales......................................................... 36 Laure-Caroline Semmer

Portrait of the Artist at Home......................................................... 47 Elstir.................................................................................................... 58 Aurore Le Pogam-Laloy

Sea, Ships, Voyages........................................................................... 61 Into the Breach............................................................................... 81 Epilogue.......................................................................................... 87

THE WORLD OF PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU.................. 88 Portraits.......................................................................................... 91 Pastels........................................................................................... 101 The Diamond Tip...................................................................................139 Sylvie Collignon

The Gardens of Versailles..........................................................................154 Henrik Harpsoe and Manon Hasselmann

Intimacy......................................................................................... 160 Frédérique de Watrigant

Open-air Painting......................................................................... 203 Sky and Sea: Helleu’s Seascapes..................................................................211 Laure-Caroline Semmer

Helleu, Creator of Interiors.......................................................................238 Côme Rémy

Still Lifes....................................................................................... 259 APPENDIX..................................................................................... 268 Paulette Helleu............................................................................. 268 Frédérique de Watrigant

Helleu and His Models................................................................. 269 Paulette Howard-Johnston

Boldini Said to Me….................................................................... 277 Paulette Howard-Johnston

“Bonjour Mr. Elstir”..................................................................... 281 Paulette Howard-Johnston

Chronology................................................................................... 284 Index of Names Cited................................................................... 292 Bibliography.................................................................................. 301 Photographic Credits.................................................................... 303

Foreword Paul Helleu, Painter and Engraver by Robert de Montesquiou, published in 1913, was the last significant work consecrated to the artist. Today, thanks to Les Amis de Paul-César Helleu and to the impetus of his daughter Paulette Howard-Johnston, Helleu finds the place he deserves among his peers with this illustrated biography, which constitutes the introduction to a catalogue raisonné of his work. Thanks to his daughter’s account of an epoch she knew well, to the biographical indications she provided and to the countless anecdotes she was willing to share with us, her project can, at last, take shape today. For fifteen years, Les Amis de PaulCésar Helleu association, which she founded, has sought to elaborate a finer knowledge of the man and his work. A great number of museum curators, collectors, researchers and a team of associates and archivists have all been willing to contribute to this task. We offer them our warmest thanks and deepest appreciation for their precious aid. Here, our intention is to familiarize the public with the artist’s life, and with the extremely varied aspects of his work, leaving future research to focus on the more technical aspects of Helleu’s art. Paul-César Helleu, one of the most talented artists of his generation, had a complex personality. And yet, this talent, recognized by all his peers, is quite different from the dandy’s reputation that some have been eager to attribute to him. Corresponding to an acknowledged need, this book should restore Helleu to the place that belongs to him by right, and enable a wide public to appreciate him. Les Amis de Paul-César Helleu

Marie Renard, 1884 Oil on canvas 54 × 45.5 cm Private collection

Introduction Helleu’s name evokes a time that takes us from the late 19th century to the years preceding World War I, a period admirably described in Marcel Proust’s work. During his lifetime, Helleu met with extraordinary success on both sides of the Atlantic, and this owes much to his remarkable representations of beautiful women in a privileged society. He loved women, and his drawings and engravings are a celebration of their beauty. His confident, extremely swift gestures (his portraits were completed in two-hour sittings) and delicate lines, drawn with diamond point or pencil, entirely capture his models’ grace. These exquisite drawings, pastels and etchings contributed greatly to his reputation, but more significantly, Helleu’s refined taste marked the epoch. His inventiveness gave rise to a particular “French fashion,” which for more than twenty years influenced the styles sought after in private homes and gardens, as in women’s fashions. And yet, beyond this talent, a great part of his work remains unknown to a wide public. Helleu was an exceptional painter, but – no doubt because of a modest streak – he refused to exhibit his canvasses, hiding them even from his friends. “Once I’m dead,” he used to say. With his Brittany origins, Helleu was naturally drawn to the sea and shifting clouds. Right from the start, he took his family off to the Normandy coast to spend summer seasons on yachts. Although he did not often sail on these occasions, he frequently received friends and models, drawn by his sociable character and caustic sense of humor. Helleu had an impulsive nature – he was not bound by the strictures of any one school – and painted, simply, with joyous enthusiasm and in feverish haste, using a broad, light-colored palette. He seized the moment – the light’s pattern, the sky’s hue – empowered by his joie de vivre. And yet, often dissatisfied with the work he’d review under a different sky the next day, he would cover these canvasses with a layer of white, or toss them overboard, trying again and again to capture the moment’s sensations. While aboard his boats, Helleu the Impressionist, much admired by so many of his fellow artists, applied himself to the most striking themes in his work: beaches, bridges, white sails on yachts, scurrying clouds, women with parasols, freshly cut flowers. His excessive sensitivity and self-criticism have deprived us of a large number of these paintings; a great shame, for his work is that of a follower of Manet and Monet. The scarcity and quality of these paintings have lent them an exceptional value today. Will the present work give rise to a better knowledge of Helleu, and restore him to the place his contemporaries ascribed to him? That, in any case, is the hope of all who have contributed to it.

Frédérique de Watrigant

Portrait de Paul Helleu par Boldini,1895 (Portrait of Paul Helleu by Boldini), Black pencil drawing 70 × 38.5 cm Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, bequeathed to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. 2010.1.85

The Life of

Paul-César

Helleu Xavier Narbaïts

Paul Helleu en buste de profil, par Gerschel (Paul Helleu, head and shoulder profile by Gerschel) Silver-plate photograph Private collection

From Brittany to Paris

t required both precision and character. The young PaulCésar Helleu had both: as it deftly sailed through the air, the cheese dessert described a graceful arc before crowning the maid, who, now sporting a headdress the color of which was the only thing it had in common with those traditionally worn by Breton women, immediately proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. In the ensuing confusion, the dessert-thrower fled, left the family homestead, took the train for Paris and went off to find Jean-Léon Gérôme, who accepted him in his studio at the École des Beaux-Arts. Thus began a precocious vocation, the genesis of which shall now require a return into the past.

PROVINCIAL GENTRY Paul-César Helleu, usually just known as Paul, was born on December 17, 1859, in Vannes, “in the old Rue de Séné, which lorded over the port.” We have little in the way of information concerning his family, except that his father, Pierre-César, not a ship captain as the artist’s daughter Paulette made clear years later, but a “master mariner” according to Jean Vallery-Radot, belonged to the local landed gentry whereas his mother, née Marie-Esther Guyot, was a Parisian. Mlle Alice Louis-Guérin, 1885 Pastel 118 × 74 cm Signed bottom right Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, donated to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, CMNI 3037

Like many other families without any particular aura about them, the Helleus were able to boast a rather extraordinary figure among their ancestors: Paul’s great-uncle, Joseph-Marie le Quinio de Kerblay (1755-1814), lawyer and son of one of the king’s personal surgeons. The origin of his fortune was a loan of 12,000 pounds, consented to by the States of Brittany in 1783 and reimbursed, in the year II (after the revolution), in revolutionary assignats. A conservative man, he demanded the sequestration of all property belonging to emigrants and was among those who voted the death penalty for Louis XVI, which did not stop him from marrying, on the 6th of Ventôse (sixth month of the postrevolutionary Republican calendar) of the year X, Jeanne-Odette-Marie de Lévis-Mirepoix. She was an orphan and quite poor (in any case her marriage contract leads one to believe so), but nonetheless belonged twice over to the House of Lévis, being the daughter of Louis-Marie de Lévis, Marquis of Mirepoix and colonel in the Royal-Marine regiments, and of Catherine-Agnès de Lévis. And even though these were distant ancestors, such an alliance was certainly not a hindrance to the young Paul as he took his first steps in Parisian high society. Moreover, Joseph-Marie’s purchase of state properties in Brittany – “I bought 92,000 pounds worth, and for that, I had to borrow 78,000 pounds,” he vigorously stated in his defense when accused of embezzlement – means that he is, in large part, at the origin of the family fortune. Among the parcels of land that he bought on the peninsula of Rhuys, there was one that had belonged to the family of the Marquis de Gouvello. It bore a name that implied it had passed through the hands of a revolutionary: The Mad Cow!

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In 1793, Le Quinio requested that Rousseau be buried in the Pantheon; on 9 Thermidor year II (July 27, 1794), his abuse of power and his plundering led to a warrant for his arrest but he was amnestied on 4 Brumaire of the year IV and joined Bonaparte’s side after 18 Brumaire. A member of the Council of Five Hundred, he left for the United States, where he became consul of Newport, commissioner of commercial relations with France. In the United States, he acquired 1,500 acres of land in Virginia, separated from his wife and then returned to France in 1806 in order to devote himself to a life of agriculture. Before leaving for the New World, the Le Quinios had chosen Jean le Quinio (brother of JosephMarie, “independently wealthy and living in the city of Vannes”) as their heir. When it was his turn, Jean left all of his worldly possessions to their sister, Marie-Anne (Paul’s grandmother), who became a Helleu by marriage. Helleu, described as a “landlord in Sarzeau,” attempted to recover the inheritance of his aunt by marriage, née CatherineAgnès de Lévis, and in this context, had a savory correspondence with the Marquis de Fougères, the French consul at Charleston, who informed him in 1819 of the legal separation and division of property of the Le Quinio couple, specifying, concerning Catherine-Agnès, that “ever since this separation, she has been looking after what remains rather well.” In 1826, the consul summons him: “I must inform you that this lady has been dead for approximately two years and that she made out her will to a French family by the name of Dugat, living in the city of Savannah…where her will must be recorded.” Ultimately, in order to get rid of him, the consul advises Helleu to get in touch with his counterpart in Savannah. We have no idea what actually came of this affair but it does seem that the Helleus never actually inherited anything from their aunt. Much later on, in a mischievous allusion to this great-uncle Le Quinio, and to the eminence of Helleu, his grand-nephew, Marcel Proust would say to Robert de Montesquiou: “He is the descendant of a guillotine executioner but he looks more like the descendent of the victim of the guillotine!”

The money amassed by the Helleus, thanks to their uncle, would not be enough to ward off ill fortune, though. Paul was only three years old when his father died, forcing his twenty-eight-year-old widow to take his place, both regarding the education of the young fatherless child and Édouard, his older brother, and in looking after the family’s possessions. The widow accomplished this with success, and the management of their Morbihan properties even earned her the rare honor, according to at least one story told by her proud descendents, of being among the first women in France to win the prestigious Order of Agricultural Merit. The young boy joined a religious school in Vannes run by the Picpus Order and stayed there from 1866 to 1872 to pursue his secondary studies. The following year, his mother sent him to Paris to continue his schooling at Collège Chaptal, where one of her uncles had taught. Even though he occasionally wrote a letter to his mother proudly proclaiming things like, “I came in second again this week. This is the second time I am going to be Sergeant. Every time you come in second, you get to visit the headmaster who congratulates you,” he did not turn out to be a particularly brilliant scholar. On the other hand, he was already very interested in drawing and his maternal grandmother allowed him to take private lessons. His teacher, M. Noël, took note of his talent and sent him models to work from. On Sundays, he went to the Louvre. Still, he had difficulties adapting to boarding school. And though he had shown a taste for drawing, his true artistic calling would really only reveal itself in 1874, when his mother, who came to visit Paris, took him to the Salon des Beaux-Arts and introduced him to Le Chemin de fer by Édouard Manet. It must be noted that those who understood and appreciated what was so revolutionary in this painting were then few and far between. In his review of the exhibition, Jules Claretie wrote these scathing words: “Mr. Manet is one of those who claim that one can and must satisfy oneself with nothing but an impression.” Mrs. Helleu, an amateur watercolor artist herself, proved to have a remarkably open mind and even a penchant for originality.

THE LIFE OF PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU 17

Helleu faisant le portrait de Mme Gautreau dans l’atelier de Deck, 1884 (Helleu painting Mme Gautreau’s portrait in the Deck workshop) Ceramic dish Private collection

A ONE-WAY TICKET: VANNES – PARIS But from there to accepting that her son could become “an artist” himself was a huge step that nothing predisposed her to take. Authoritarian and very pious, she imagined her son as a lowly painter, succumbing to all of the temptations a large city could offer, squandering the family fortune. Motherly fears had little impact on the young Paul and while still at Chaptal, during one of his visits to the Louvre, he met a charming milliner whom he began to draw. Drawing led the young couple to other games, quickly interrupted by the summer vacation and the young lover’s return to Brittany. Rather imprudently, the young milliner sent him a letter: shrewd, or perhaps simply suspicious, the maid intercepted the letter and handed it to Mrs. Helleu. A nasty argument ensued during which Paul’s outraged mother inflicted a very predictable ultimatum: he would have to stop seeing the woman, take his exams and undertake a career in administration, or else. The cheese dessert sailing through the air and landing on the servant, which we began our story with, put an immediate and abrupt end to the tirade of maternal ambitions for her son as well as punishing the deviously indiscreet servant. The young Helleu might not have yet become an artist but he certainly proved to have a true artistic temperament! After this incident and his return to Paris, he rarely visited his native region and indeed broke off all ties with Brittany as soon as it was possible, meaning – and we will come back to this – after his mother’s death. Putting Brittany behind him, he rapidly became a “Parisian,” a term applied to personalities of varying talents but who all shared one common trait: none of them were born in the capital.

AT THE BEAUX-ARTS A strong temperament, albeit necessary perhaps, doesn’t compensate for everything and in any case, is not a quality that can secure one’s day to day existence. Mrs. Helleu was of course obliged to bow to her son’s decision, but because she was cautious (or a bit vindictive?), she substantially tightened his budget, only

sending the young artist boxes of paint but not the money he continually demanded. In order to sway her, he wrote, “I swear to you, I love, I simply adore painting and I would never have amounted to anything in any other occupation.” Gérôme as well – following his wishes, Helleu was accepted in his studio – did everything he could to quell Paul’s mother’s worries, writing to Marie-Esther Helleu on March 28, 1878: “I am extremely happy to say that I am writing you with nothing but glowing praise concerning your son. He is doing very good work and progressing quickly, he is an intelligent young man. I have no doubts that his extraordinary willpower will lead him to excellent results in his art in the near future.” Gérôme was showing a great deal of tolerance here because his student had little inclination to follow in the academic footsteps initiated by his master and on the contrary admired the landscape and nature painters (such as Boudin, Manet and Monet), the purveyors of Impressionism, a new form of art that Gérôme was highly critical of. His missive, although particularly laudatory, seems to have had little effect on Madame Helleu, who continued to stubbornly refuse to satisfy her son’s increasingly desperate demands, such as this one quoted by Jean Adhémar: “I was obliged to borrow a louis’ from a friend. I am counting on you.You would regret what you are doing if you saw what I looked like. Neither your harvests nor your properties concern me any longer. I will not live long enough to be able to enjoy them.” (Helleu, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Les Presses artistiques, 1957, p. 11)

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Portrait de Mme Gautreau, 1884 (Portrait of Mme Gautreau) Deck ceramic Diam. 60 cm Musée des Arts décoratifs, inv. RF 3594

Jeune femme à la harpe, 1885 (Young Woman Playing the Harp) Deck ceramic Diam. 39 cm Private collection, Paris

A YOUNG PAINTER’S CERAMICS Yet another family drama was shortly to occur: returning from Liverpool, where his mother had sent him to learn English, Édouard, Paul’s elder brother, suddenly died at the tender age of 22, apparently a victim of tuberculosis. Paul became the “head” of the family, which was now reduced to its smallest unit; just him and his mother. “Head” of the family? This might be a slightly premature assumption. Judging him depraved, Marie-Esther Helleu was convinced that “the scurrilous company he is keeping in the painter’s studios has warped his judgment” (letter to her sister in 1879), and so his mother decided to put him under guardianship. A period of great financial difficulties began for the young artist. Even though he traveled to Holland with Sargent, Curtis and Chadwick, he was extremely poor. The only people to come to his rescue were Marie Renard, who had posed for Manet and Morisot, and a model named Olympia: “this strange, tubercular and neurotic girl…held his domestic life together, shared in the pleasures and despair of a perpetual malcontent, darned his silk socks, washed the cuffs and the sleeves of his shirts that had been stained with color by Helleu’s long boney fingers. And he still didn’t sell anything.” (Jacques-Émile Blanche) Adversity of this sort didn’t stop the painter from continuing to have very pleasant relationships with women, nor from looking after his appearance (he wore a false shirt-front in order to hide the holes in his shirt). But his taste for luxury during this period could only be expressed in the form of a single object: an ebony cane with a silver knob, given to him by a dandy in exchange for his portrait. So, in order to fulfill his pecuniary needs during his studies at the Beaux-Arts, the young Paul began to decorate plates for the ceramic artist Théodore Deck. Blanche remarks: “For ten years, he made these medallion-plates that were displayed in the

window of one of the well-frequented shops on Rue Halévy.” We know very little about the plates, which were undoubtedly ornaments destined as architectural decoration. Among the works that emerged from his collaboration with Deck were several large platters, one of which was made in 1882 and is today at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. On it Helleu painted Madame Pierre Gautreau (“I love this one more than anything else I have done in ceramics,” he would write to his mother), a woman who was renowned for her beauty at the time and whom John Singer Sargent painted a large portrait of in 1884, a painting whose immense sensuality provoked a sensational scandal and that the artist later sold to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. That same year, Helleu wrote to his mother: “I made another big ceramic dish… I am late with my work for Deck. This bothers me greatly but I am going to do more beautiful plates and they will just have to be patient.”

FIRST ENCOUNTERS It was in Gérôme’s workshop, frequented by artists such as Giovanni Boldini, Jean-Louis Forain and Antonio de La Gándara, that Helleu met and got to know John Singer Sargent. Ratcliff Carter and Stanley Olson emphasize Sargent’s elegance, a form of elegance which did not leave Helleu indifferent: “They had the same taste in clothes. Helleu also hated the fashion nonchalance of his friends and refused to wear wide corduroy pants that were tight around the ankles, soft silk ties, a fedora. Helleu and Sargent were different from the others… [I]n the way they dressed…, you might almost mistake them for brothers.” Helleu’s youngest daughter, Paulette Howard-Johnston, recounts: “One afternoon in April, 1876, John S. Sargent, who was twenty at the time, and his friend Paul Helleu, seventeen, decided to go to

THE LIFE OF PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU 19

Buste de jeune femme, 1880 (Bust of Young Woman) Deck ceramic Diam. 60 cm Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, donated by Harry and Maribel Blum, inv. 2001.114

Jeune femme à la collerette de dentelle, 1885 (Young Woman in a Lace Collar) Deck ceramic Diam. 60 cm Private collection

the second big Impressionist exhibition at Durand-Ruel, 11 rue Le Peletier. They were so excited by the paintings they saw that they stayed until nightfall and, recognizing Monet in the crowd, Sargent approached him, saying: ‘Are you really Claude Monet?’ Invited by Sargent, the three of them went to dine at the Café du Helder. This was the beginning of a friendship that would continue until the end of their lives.” (L’œil, March, 1969) Helleu remembered years later: “At the Beaux-Arts when I was fifteen, I was the only one who liked Manet and Monet and because of that, I had sixty classmates yapping ill of me at my heels!” During the two-year period from 1876 to 1878, he would become friends with men who were at the forefront of the new artistic movements, French and foreign alike (there were many of the latter, drawn to the cultural effervescence of Paris at the time). Among the French, in addition to Monet, there were painters such as Edgar Degas and Jean-Louis Forain, sculptors like Auguste Rodin and writers such as Paul Bourget. They came from all over: the Italian Giovanni Boldini, the Spaniards Raimundo Madrazo y Garreta and Rafael de Ochoa y Madrazo, the Belgian Alfred Stevens and the Americans James Abbott McNeill Whistler and, especially, John Singer Sargent. It was in order to share the latter’s more convenient studio at 41 boulevard Berthier, in a space that Boldini would later work out of, that Paul Helleu left the one he was working in on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. He wrote to his mother in 1882 that he was “extremely well set up” there. His financial worries continued, though, and he continued his letter by saying: “I am going to try and sell my paintings and my pastels in order to eat when I no longer have any money. Your letter was very hurtful. I don’t deserve being scolded to such an extent. I am worth so much more than you think.” Sargent and Helleu worked together for a while and then, without it having any negative impact on their friendship, they

separated. Helleu rented the studio of Alphonse de Neuville, a painter specialized in military subjects. In 1883, the art critic Duez noticed (and appreciated) two works that the young Helleu exhibited at the Cercle des Arts Libéraux. One was a painting representing La Plage du Pouliguen (The Beach at Pouliguen), about which he wrote to his mother that he “purchased a frame for 50 francs.” The other was a pastel titled Femme lisant (Woman Reading). The same year, the painter made a second trip to Holland, this time with Belleroche and Sargent, and got the latter to buy an unfinished work during the Manet sale. His financial problems with his mother continued. She wrote to him in September 1884: “It seems that I sent you, in just one month, 270 francs. Your behavior toward me is downright shameful. I get up at 5 in the morning, I deprive myself of all sorts of things and you, you spend your money as though you were the son of a rich family… When…your letters are brought to me I am always filled with dread because I know they will only contain requests for money. Try to be self-sufficient… When one is able to work, one should have enough dignity not to be a burden to one’s mother.” She uses the formal “vous,” which goes a long way toward explaining the type of affection she felt for her son.

THE BEGINNINGS OF A CAREER The period from 1884 to 1886 marked a turning point in the young artist’s life, as much from a personal point of view as a professional one. First of all, at his friend Ochoa’s studio, he met the Louis-Guérins, who had commissioned portraits from Ochoa. They asked Helleu to paint a portrait of their daughter Alice, a stunning redhead who was only fourteen. The artist got to work, and entered two pastels, Portrait de Mlle Alice Louis-Guérin and La Gare Saint-Lazare, in the 1885 Pastel Artists’ Salon. Both paintings were

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HELLEU THE IMPRESSIONNIST LA GARE SAINT-LAZARE Laure-Caroline Semmer

When in 1874, in his mother’s company, the young Helleu discovered Manet’s Le Chemin de fer (The Railway), there is no doubt that the freedom of brushstroke and the attention paid to the steam in the background had a great effect on the young man. What audacity! He knew then he would become a painter. And his master at the Beaux-Arts, Gérôme, would not prevent him from exploring Impressionism and the way it was revolutionizing the visual arts. Furthermore, in 1876, the year he joined the Beaux-Arts, he went with his friend Sargent to the second Impressionist exhibition and struck up a lifelong friendship with Monet. In 1885, eight years after the Impressionist master, Helleu took an interest in Saint-Lazare station as a subject. In typical Impressionist style, seizing the motif in the moment, he showed his interest in the steam effects that had so obsessed Monet. Through its highly innovative framing, playing on vertical lines, his work is a reminder of the influence that photography had on other painters of the movement, like Degas and Caillebotte.

Édouard Manet Le Chemin de fer, 1873 (The Railway) Oil on canvas 93.3 × 111.5 cm Washington DC, Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, Ref. 1956.10.1

Claude Monet Le Pont d’Europe, gare Saint-Lazare, 1877 (The Europe Bridge) Oil on canvas 64 × 81 cm Paris, Musée Marmottan, inv. 4015

But it is above all in the way he captures the present moment that the painter starts to reveal what would become his own special style: the play between the clear, pure contours and the importance of lines in opposition to an often evanescent background barely depicted in a few brushstrokes. It is a style that can be found in his portraits but also in his seascapes and his Versailles series.

OVERLEAF:

La Gare Saint-Lazare, c. 1885 (Saint-Lazare Station) Oil on canvas 103 × 160 cm London, Nevill Keating Gallery

Mme Helleu de profil, 1892 (Mme Helleu in Profile) Drypoint 27.3 × 7.3 cm Private collection

highly praised in articles by the critics Joris-Karl Huysmans, Roger Marx and Octave Mirabeau. Concerning the paintings, Mirabeau wrote that “one of them is the portrait of a young girl. Tall, slender, seen in profile, her face is pale, framed in goldenred… Her magnificent hair falls in waves over a black dress. It is all very simple, very personal… The second pastel…is one of the Gare Saint-Lazare. Trains leaving, trains arriving, steaming, heavy, devouring the rails, emerging from the gaping black jaws of the arches of the bridge overhead. Enormous whirlwinds of steam, vomited forth from the locomotive stacks, fill the painting, float over the parapets, stain the sky, climb along the surrounding houses. One can almost smell the bitter perfume of coal wafting up from the canvas. One can feel the air torn asunder by the heavy steam-breath of the pistons and the coughing of the iron horses. The painting has been done in a blue tone, a blue-gray into which the steam melds and which is pierced through by the red dots of lights. The overall impression is excellent.” Critical acclaim was of course important for Helleu, but of less importance than a much more personal and intimate event: the charming Paul, whom Henri Bidou described later as being “as handsome as an Arab pirate,” fell in love with his beautiful model, who in response was not totally insensitive herself to the charm of her portraitist. Ten years later, an article in Le Figaro (1905) described Alice: “slender with periwinkle-blue eyes that speak, a slightly turned-up nose, Madame Helleu is the typical ‘Parisienne’ such as her husband offers us for posterity.” Totally besotted, Helleu confided in his mother that “this is the first time in my life that I have been thinking of the same person for over two straight years; I dine twice a week with the young redhead, Mademoiselle Guérin, Boulevard Maillot, and I love no one but her. I have been working hard for two years, thinking only of her, and she is the real reason behind my progress.” And in another letter, he says: “I love her…she is becoming extremely beautiful… I love but her, she is so good, so well brought up, and especially, so distinguished…and there is only one thing that makes me suffer and that is that I don’t have enough money to marry her.” The

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following year, though, the young couple decided to get engaged. Still, Alice’s parents stipulated that the young woman must turn sixteen before they could get married, and they added two other conditions to the agreement: the young couple had to live with them for the first two years and Alice must finish her studies.

DISCOVERY OF DRYPOINT ENGRAVING Since the engaged couple was obliged to obey this parental decree, the suitor took advantage of the imposed delay by trying out drypoint engraving, the most delicate technique of engraving imaginable, because it entails engraving with a diamond tip directly onto a sheet of copper. The technique makes any touching up or alteration impossible. The engraver’s hand has to be perfectly steady. Helleu had one of the best “masters” to help and encourage him in his first engravings: James Tissot, devastated by the death of his mistress Kathleen Newton (who was also his favorite model), had given up this technique and offered Helleu his first drypoint, an English-made diamond tip, vastly superior to those used in France, arousing the envy of many an artist. Walter Sickert saw to the biting of Helleu’s first engraved sheet. Later in 1885, on the recommendation of his master, Gérôme, Helleu was hired by a British sponsor as decorator in order to work on a Panorama. We have no further details concerning this particular work.

THE COLORS OF THE THAMES In order to work on this Panorama in London, Helleu was obliged to spend six weeks in England. He arrived accompanied by Ochoa and bearing letters of recommendation from Stevens, Madrazo y Garreta and Gérôme. He received an advance of 200 francs and earned 25 francs a day, a modest sum but one that allowed him to proudly announce to his mother: “Living here is expensive... but this is the first time I will cost you nothing… I shall often

return to London. There are not that many painters here and paintings are very expensive.” He kept his word. His passion for England began with this sojourn, an Anglomania that he shared with Jacques-Émile Blanche, whom he met around this time in Henri Gervex’s studios. The tone of the letters the latter wrote to him shows that a virile friendship was quickly established between them: “I have two, even three charming affaires and my time is spent quite agreeably,” Blanche told him on August 19, 1885, and he described an outing in another letter as “much petting and we drew all these young creatures lying on the grass.” Blanche would remember the numerous trips they took to London: “A gang of painters, among them Helleu, drawn by his friend Sargent, Whistler’s neighbors from Tite Street and perhaps… the divine Princess of Wales; but more than all that I believe, the Thames… Helleu’s warm grays were surprisingly distinct, they bore a touch of strangeness that held the gaze of art lovers. I believe that his love of the Thames…was contagious. Though Claude Monet and many fake impressionists painted the Thames, none of them…expressed as well as Helleu did its light, which is at the same time mottled and monochrome, heavy, impalpable and fleeting, erasing layers and perspectives… In London, the sun can never be found where it is supposed to be according to the clock. Helleu erased everything out of despair: what has become of his paintings of London?” Indeed, it is highly unfortunate that we know almost nothing about these works. Blanche remembers the admiration that Helleu provoked among his contemporaries: “No one can possibly have emptied as many giant tubes of white paint, shellac, madder-rose, nor used as many spatulas. Among us young painters who were a bit younger than him, he was considered the most skilled, the most talented; Manet, Monet, Renoir thought the same thing as we did. What is more, he appeared to be as intelligent as he was witty; we were subjugated by a sort of verbal erethism that he had, made up of enthusiasm and disdain; the self-assurance he had in his judgment of Art attracted us all to this painting fanatic. We would have done pretty much anything in order to look at his oil studies in the mysterious

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apartment on the Boulevard Pereire, where no one entered except those red-headed beauties with green skin, mistresses and slaves, who whispered, ‘If you only knew what lurked within, he is a genius, one cannot refuse anything to a man like him.’ Charming, young and pretty creatures, whom we can imagine were apt to appreciate more than just his artistic talents!”

INITIAL SUCCESS For Helleu, 1886 can be summed up in one “no” and two “yeses.” First of all, undoubtedly because of his loyalty to Monet, who refused to participate because of his disagreement with Paul Gauguin, he declined the invitation that Degas addressed him to be part of the eighth Impressionist Exhibition. On the other hand, he agreed to send two of his works – Portrait of Mlle de Béchevet and Femme à l’Éventail (Woman with Fan) – to the Salon. The critics Roger Marx and Edmond Jacques wrote very favorable articles about them, the former in Voltaire and the latter in L’Instransigeant, where he said that Helleu “is going to become famous, he is a revelation.” As a consequence, his fame first appeared under the mischievous traits of a caricature portrait drawn by Caran d’Ache for Le Figaro, dated May 22. During the same period, nominated to the Society of Pastel Painters, Helleu exhibited at Georges Petit’s “five or six square canvases, framed with thin strips of wood. These ‘pages,’ as they were called at the time, had a novel flavor to them. Among those that were especially noticed were a beautiful portrait of Miss de Béchevet and that of another pretty young woman, Arthur Meyer’s niece… These two pastels were painted with evening light… Helleu never used lighting that was too extreme or vulgar…, he sought delicate colors, like a Whistlerian Berthe Morisot, subtle nuances that pastel painting hadn’t yet been able to accomplish.” (Jacques-Émile Blanche) Crowning a prosperous beginning of the year, on July 29, the marriage of Alice and Paul was finally celebrated in the Saint-Pierre de Neuilly church. Marie-Esther Helleu was informed at the very last minute. Truth be told, she had done nothing to make her son’s

life any easier. And yet Jacques-Émile Blanche’s mother, who knew Paul well because he had often stayed with her in Dieppe, told him, “I will gladly sign a certificate, of course, you will make an excellent husband.” Similarly, Madame Guérin was won over to the idea of marriage, decided to move the date forward and wanted to meet Marie-Esther “because of your son Paul who is saddened by the incertitude in which he lives”; and then further on, speaking of her daughter, she insisted that “I would have preferred she marry much later, but I see that I cannot prolong this much longer. Especially because of your son Paul, who is made increasingly nervous by this long wait.” As for Paul, he continued searching for arguments, writing to his mother: “I simply adore the young woman whom you found so charming and who truly is… You have given me nothing, I have nothing but I shall get married anyway… You can leave in peace now, knowing that if I fall ill, I shall be looked after.” Though it is doubtful that this last line was the sort of thing that would persuade Marie-Esther to adhere to his plans, the wedding was celebrated nonetheless. Respecting the promises they had made to the Louis-Guérins, the young couple lived with the parents of the bride, either in their apartment at 7 rue Ancelle in Neuilly (where Helleu painted Le Jardin bleu), or their villa, Saint-Augustin, in Bénerville (a vacation resort near Deauville), which made it possible for the young artist to paint his seascapes. The day before one of his trips, he wrote to his mother-in-law, speaking of Alice: “I adore her and I am completely happy. So happy that there are moments when I am afraid of my happiness.”

London,Trafalgar Square au crépuscule, 1885 (London, Trafalgar Square at Dusk) Oil on canvas 75 × 63 cm Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, bequeathed to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. 2010-1-19

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PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU

Mlle de Béchevet, 1886 Pastel 119.4 × 106.7 cm Private collection

A Man of the World at Work

he following decade Helleu’s time was divided between his work and meeting with his friends or attending high-society parties, while his first professional successes were announced and his family enjoyed the happy arrival on September 4, 1887, of Ellen, the first of his four children. A short time later, the happy father wrote to Marie-Esther Helleu, telling his mother how proud he was. He included a drawing he did of his daughter in the letter. “Ellen weighs 15 pounds. She never, ever cries. I haven’t heard her so much as complain for two weeks now. Everybody finds her so charming. This sketch is not terribly faithful. She is much prettier.” In the same letter, he added: “I am presently exhibiting three pastels at the Palais Royal in Brussels. I have received many newspaper articles but Alice is collecting them, otherwise I would send them to you.” The same year, six of his works, several of them lent by JacquesÉmile Blanche’s mother or by the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, were exhibited at the pastels salon (at Georges Petit’s place). Among them were two portraits of Alice and Tête d’Espagnole, the latter painted in the spirit of certain works by Manet, themselves inspired by the Spanish school. It was noticed by the art critic of the République française (April 4): “Mr. Helleu is a very personal and a very original artist… His work especially proceeds from the Spanish masters with their free and ample style, and if he had not studied them, he surely would not have given us this portrait of a dark haired woman whose flower-shaped lip smiles with such piquant poignancy.”

During the same period, he met Robert de Montesquiou, in whom Proust, star-struck as he always was before someone bearing a title, saw “the professor of beauty” for a whole generation. Much less inclined toward such reverence, Léon Daudet pictured him as “ridiculously affected, much too abundant and digressive, unbearable but singular” (in his Souvenirs littéraires). Even more elliptic and with his well-known wit, Jean Lorrain very quickly nicknamed him “Grotesquiou”! This marked the beginning of a long friendship, which continued until the poet’s death; Montesquiou, who admired Helleu’s work, would buy six drypoints from him.

PARIS – LONDON – PARIS In 1889 and 1890, the Helleus visited Great Britain and spent time on both occasions at Fladbury with Sargent, who asked Paul to give him several drypoints in order to exhibit and sell them in the United States. During their first stay, the two artists did several studies of Alice, and Helleu, bristling with enthusiasm, wrote to Blanche: “My wife and daughter and I have been staying with Sargent for a week now, in a wonderful big red house, halfcovered in ivy, with a lawn that goes down to the river. It is the most sublimely English place I have ever seen. We have several charming shaped boats and several models. I am planning on staying at least a month so that I may endeavor to finish my paintings and my pastel projects.” In John Singer Sargent: His Portrait,

IN THE COURT OF ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU Francesca Dini Robert de Montesquiou was born on March19, 1855, in his grandfather’s Paris mansion, the Hôtel de Béthune, 60 rue de Varenne. He was the descendant of one of the greatest French families, with origins going back to Merovingian times. Over the centuries, the family produced a great many famous men, the best-known of whom was Charles de Batz of Castelmore, seigneur d’Artagnan, commander of King Louis XIV’s musketeers. Robert de Montesquiou was the personification of elegance and good taste in Paris society. A refined and decadent intellectual, he liked to define himself as the “sovereign of transitory things.” He was surrounded by his own “court” of eminent society figures as well as the painters Whistler, Helleu, Boldini and La Gándara, the musicians Debussy and Fauré, and men of letters such as Verlaine, Rimbaud, Proust, Edmond de Goncourt, José Maria de Heredia, Stéphane Mallarmé, Anatole France and Gabriele d’Annunzio; all enjoyed his sumptuous hospitality. Eclecticism related to the modern concept of the art of living was a central aspect of his aesthetic, a kind of artistic emotion that led him to live in constant contact with works of art, which for him were made not for museums but to embellish daily life. This feeling also applied to objects, whence Montesquiou’s desire to minimize the difference between high-level craftsmanship and works of art, per se. In his various residences – the Montesquiou pavilion near Versailles, the Pavilion des Portrait du comte Robert de Montesquiou, 1890 (Portrait of Comte Robert de Montesquiou) Drypoint, 1st state 67 × 53 cm “Printed in ten broken plates” Robert de Montesquiou, Helleu peintre et graveur, H. Floury, 1913, pl. VI Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, bequeathed to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. 2010.1.229 After several hours, the aqua-forte, which to me is one of Helleu’s masterpieces, was complete. It is rare that proud men are satisfied by images of themselves. I was satisfied with mine. (Robert de Montesquiou)

Muses in Neuilly and the Palais Rose in Le Vésinet (an imitation of the Trianon, built in 1899) – he held sumptuous parties that expressed his permanent artistic sensitivities. Members of the Paris smart set were ever present, as were the elites of Europe and America. The “Prince of Decadence” offered his guests rare fruit, and lavish dishes cooked according to ancient recipes and served in precious tableware. Music was provided by a hidden orchestra featuring famous performers of the Wagnerian repertoire, and poetry was read by actresses as famous as Sarah Bernhardt or Ida Rubinstein against a musical background by Gabriel Fauré. Placing art at the center of life was a sign of great modernity, which made Montesquiou’s aesthetic ideas very interesting. He represented the kind of figure who one might believe had disappeared at the end of the 18th century – the “arbiter of taste,” as Baudelaire and Gautier called him.

Vase d’hortensias dans un cache-pot à croisillons, c. 1913 (Vase of Hydrangeas in a LatticeWork Flower-Pot Holder) Pastel on paper 63.5 × 79 cm Inscription: Mr de Montesquiou Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, bequeathed to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. 2010-1-35 In paintings and pastels, I own seven panels of hydrangeas grown by Helleu, the nodding blue-green corymbs of which reflect in silver platters like bouquets of dead turquoise; the blue hydrangeas are so full of dreams. (Robert de Montesquiou)

He had a genuine influence on fashion and, maybe because of that, this modern Narcissus, a distinguished, cultivated and handsome man, loved having his portrait painted. His compulsions and neuroses inspired Joris-Karl Huysmans to create the decadent intellectual character in his novel À rebours and Marcel Proust the Baron de Charlus in À la recherche du temps perdu. The figure who best illustrates Montesquiou’s melancholic poetry was the painter Paul-César Helleu, who also shared his passion for hydrangeas. The gracious portraitist of the elegant society of his time produced the illustration of the cover of the book Les Hortensias bleus (Blue Hydrangeas) and, in return, Montesquiou offered this dedication: Vous m’avez mon cher Maître À l’Ami le plus bleu fait le précieux don de cette fleur frontale qui sur mon livre emballé, s’azure et s’étale Soyez en donc remercié, subtil Helleu�* A very different portrait was dedicated to “Hortensiou” – as Forain ironically dubbed him – by the painter Giovanni Boldini, who also shared the poet’s vision. According to Montesquiou, unlike photographic portraits, an individual portrait combined the work of its maker with the identity of the model. As a result, the modern portrait should confirm that both portraitist and model adhered to the tastes of their time through the importance accorded to vestimentary detail. Thus, Boldini’s portrait of Montesquiou depicts both a Mephistophelian figure and a gentleman elegantly dressed in a frock coat, the sharp forms of which – also noted by Gustave Geffroy – reflected the slenderness of a model obsessed by refinement.

* You have made to me my dear master your bluest friend the precious gift of that frontal flower which on my delighted book becomes azure and spreads So be you thanked for it, subtle Helleu

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Comte Robert de Montesquiou, Comtesse Ghislain de Caraman-Chimay, Prince de Sagan, Prince Edmond de Polignac, Comtesse Greffulhe and M. de SaintMaurice in Dieppe, 1886 Silver-plate photograph Private collection

Stanley Olson remarks: “He [Helleu] never forgot his debt toward John and it transformed into a veritable and reciprocal feeling of affection between them. John called him ‘Leuleu’ and Helleu always kept a letter from Sargent in his pocket, like a lucky charm. His devotion to John was total, despite his difficult character.” In London in 1889, Helleu painted the portrait of a rather important exile, Henri Rochefort, who was quite famous (author in 1868 of the celebrated quote “France has thirty-six million subjects, not including all her subjects of discontent,” the polemicist was sentenced in absentia along with General Boulanger and he followed the latter first to Brussels and then to London); his portrait was painted by Courbet in 1874 and Manet in 1881, he was sculpted by Dalou and Rodin in 1888 and around 1887, and he was photographed by Disdéri and Nadar. In a letter to Alice, the artist talks about his work in these terms: “Rochefort does a good job of posing for portraits but I am no longer used to such men, his hair is beautiful but his nose terrible, as are his eyes and chin. He is very kind… He has a little English maid who doesn’t speak a word of French and whom they have made believe that Rochefort is a French king, dethroned by his people and she believes it, and it scares her silly.” In another letter, he tells her: “[Y]esterday evening we dined at Rochefort’s. Since I was happy with his portrait, I did a sketch of his niece who was not well… I am going to cross the Park again in order to work and to see the lovely redheaded girls (I am just joking…). I am crazy about these Amazons’ hair, it is exquisite. There are so many nice things to do here. Oh, I would really appreciate being commissioned.” The painter had little to worry about because very soon, the prettiest girls of the London gentry were begging him to paint their portraits. As for pretty redheads, there would be more than one during the lifetime of this unrepentant seducer, who would prove to be consistent only when it came to the color of their hair.

FIRST STEPS IN HIGH SOCIETY In 1891, the Countess Greffulhe, who had already purchased some of his drawings, received him at the Château du Bois-Boudran and he was to do a number of pastel portraits of her. Degas, who considered him to be one of the most talented pastel artists of his generation, wanted him to exhibit these portraits. It should be noted that after the relationship he established with Montesquiou, the ties that were established thanks to the latter and his cousin, the Countess Greffulhe (Elisabeth Greffulhe, born Caraman-Chimay, whose mother’s maiden name was Montesquiou), amounted to his entering real high society because both of the cousins reigned over Parisian high society and no aspect of the artistic or social life in the capital escaped their grasp. And, if Proust was to immortalize her several years later under the guise of the Duchess of Guermantes, the beautiful Elisabeth Greffulhe had already inspired numerous artists. We know the portraits of her elegant silhouette painted by some of them, including Eugène Lami, Antonio de La Gándara and Philip de László. Her bust was sculpted by Franceschi. Concerning Bois-Boudran, Gabriel-Louis Pringué recalled: “The thousands of hectares of forests, woods and fields that surrounded the Château du Bois-Boudran brought together the best shots among the monarchs and rulers of Europe who made up the Greffulhe’s distinguished guest list. And the Greffulhes had the Paris Opera and its ballets, the Comédie-Française, famous actors from other theaters, brought in by special train for the receptions organized for their distinguished guests. Those who came the most often were King Edward VII of England, King Carlos I of Portugal and King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Greenhouses teeming with orchids, giant carnations, an exquisite chef, the lush and sumptuous parties they gave, made these sojourns at Bois-Boudran a sort of earthly paradise.” Helleu also painted a portrait of the Countess Greffulhe in the white sitting room of her private Parisian hotel on Rue Astorg, the top of the canvas finishing, in his own words, “with an Empire

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Le Billard, La Comtesse Greffulhe, 1891 (Billiard Table, Comtesse Greffulhe) Wash drawing on paper 37 × 46 cm Private collection

wall lamp.” His model would try to organize an exhibition of his works in Berlin, but the project did not come to fruition. Later, Lucien Corpechot wrote: “He who has never met the chatelaine of the Bois-Boudran at the time Helleu painted her under the mist of her curly hair, worn high, while fanning herself with a gigantic white fan…has no idea of what we still had in terms of ‘decorative sociability’ and ‘ornamental society life.’” Though this portrait of her is not completely wrong, it is nonetheless rather simplistic because the Countess Greffulhe was a veritable ambassador of the arts and Clemenceau would say of her in 1914, with total and absolute conceit: “There remain but two intelligent people in all of France: you and me!” Not long after this, Princess Edmond de Polignac, née Winnaretta Singer – enormously wealthy and patron of the arts to numerous musicians – seriously considered having Helleu paint the portraits of all her friends. Her union with the prince was set up by the Countess Greffulhe and Robert de Montesquiou (her previous marriage, which very briefly bestowed on her the title of Princess Louis de Scey-Montbéliard, was annulled); the alliance of these two famous homosexuals (although they were discreet about it) led JacquesÉmile Blanche’s mother to call it the marriage “of a sewing machine and a lyre!” La Vie parisienne mentioned the project in these terms: “A lovely fashion statement: have the portrait of all your friends done in drypoint by Helleu. The artist destroys all his plates and the result is an album, unique in the world. It is true that in order to carry

off such a caprice, it is best to possess a princely fortune.” As usual, Sargent interceded, quite happy to help out his friend, all the more so since the princess “is annoying all of London by taking around with her a small woman, undressed to the navel and frighteningly vulgar. She would do better to add her to her harem instead. It is quite extraordinary that she has you waiting so long to be paid. Would you like me to shake her up a bit? Just give me a nod and I will do it with great pleasure.” Alas, the princess was also an astute businesswoman and, judging her caprice much too costly, asked James Tissot to inform Helleu that she would not go through with the project. This proved to be unusually courteous on the part of a woman whose jibes were often so caustic that they had earned her the nickname “Vinaigretta.” In his letter, Tissot tells Helleu that he is in Jersey: “I understand your passion for Cowes. It is unique, the setting, the people; Jersey is undoubtedly more bland, especially if you are coming from the Isle of Wight… She [the princess] seems to me to be (this is strictly between us) disappointed by business in America that is hindering her budget. We shall fix all of that upon your return, to everyone’s satisfaction I hope.” But despite Tissot’s worthy efforts, the album never saw the light of day. As for Helleu, he consoled himself after this aborted commission by preparing to send his pastel painting of the Countess Greffulhe (the one he did on Rue d’Astorg) to the pastels salon, along with a portrait of Montesquiou.

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Église Saint-Jacques de Dieppe ou La Rosace, 1897 (Saint-Jacques Church in Dieppe or the Rose Window) Drypoint 41 × 31 cm Private collection

THE TIME OF CATHEDRALS The following year, Helleu, along with Caillebotte, was one of the groomsmen when Claude Monet, a widower since 1879, decided to marry Alice Hoschedé, who had quite likely been his mistress since 1875. This says much about their friendship and mutual admiration. Helleu finished his series of cathedrals, working in Notre-Dame de Paris eight hours a day. Blanche recalled that “he has told me this is what he likes, and that he worked at Chartres, Reims, NotreDame, where he stayed, entire mornings, for almost two years, visiting every nook and cranny of the towers, among the angels that were suspended in mid-air…and he told us about some celebration where, amid the singing, the pounding of the organ and the sound of bells ringing, he used his brush on his canvas, tapping it with his brush as if he were an orchestra conductor.” If Monet concentrated on the play of light outside the cathedral in Rouen, Helleu on the other hand was more interested in the interiors of these sanctuaries and even more fascinated by the light filtering through the stained-glass windows, painting the basilica of Saint-Denis and the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Reims and Notre-Dame in Paris. In fact, he sent paintings of the last two to the salons of 1892 and 1893. The paintings exhibited in 1892 inspired Alfred Stevens to compliment them: “I would like to congratulate you on the painting you sent to the Champ de Mars. It is exquisite… [I]n your art, as I have said before, there is so much taste, distinction, your eye is so delicate and pretty that I am ready to brush away your shortcomings, for after all, who doesn’t have a few? You are a true artist.” In 1894, Monet wrote to Helleu: “I am very curious to see your Intérieur de cathédrale. It must be excellent.” Still, painting on the same theme as Monet, and at the same time, was not purely advantageous. Helleu appeared to be aware of this when he wrote to Robert de Montesquiou: “I have made the decision, having discovered that one of my most famous friends is now painting the same subjects as I, to exhibit two Cathédrales at the Champ de Mars show, so that later on, I will not be accused of copying. I

would like to hang your oil painting, Hortensias [Hydrangeas], between the two paintings, it would be perfect next to my rose windows because they are of a different blue.” Helleu’s paintings did not escape the eye of critic Gustave Geffroy, who appeared to be quite charmed by them, while nonetheless picking out a few weaknesses: “Virtuosity and good taste can…be noticed here and there in the exhibit rooms, and it should be noted that these are qualities…that are not terribly common… It is easy to recognize the natural grace, the pretty way of expressing various sensations received from the effects of stained glass in the basilica of Saint-Denis and the cathedral of Reims studied by Mr. Helleu. Their construction in granite is not present enough, one wishes for more depth, height, solidity and the mystery of admirable monuments… He has been able to bring forth those dazzling stained-glass windows, as he also brought to blossom the softness of the hydrangea flower in another one of his paintings ” (Gustave Geffroy, “Salon de 1892 au Champ de Mars,” La Vie artistique, pp. 307-308).

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FROM HELLEU TO MONET LES CATHÉDRALES Laure-Caroline Semmer

In 1892, Monet and Helleu entertained separate interests in the motif of the cathedral, and the question of light was crucial to their work in both cases. For Helleu it was the variation of light through stained glass, a question of iridescence; for Monet, the contemplation of passing time and subtle changes in the day. Exhibited at the Salon du Champ de Mars in 1893, Helleu’s Cathédrales attracted critical interest. Gustave Geffroy: “The unexpected kaleidoscope, the dazzling green and purple, blue and pink, clearly fascinated and enthralled the artist and here he shows this delight. He has managed to summon up the entrancing light of stained glass.” Octave Mirbeau, meanwhile, who was among the pantheon of unfailing Monet supporters, wrote about Helleu’s Cathédrales: “The sun strikes the stained glass of SaintDenis, and in the chapel, on the walls and the pillars, in a stream of yellows, reds and greens, shimmering, quivering changing light colors the architecture, a multicolor shower of rain falling over the marble figures lying on the tombs.” Through the play of light filtering through the stained-glass windows, Helleu managed to highlight the serenity of this site

Vitraux ou Les Vitraux de Saint-Denis, 1892 (Stained-glass Windows or Stained-glass Windows of Saint-Denis) Oil on canvas 92.4 × 72.7 cm Paulette Howard-Johnston Collection, bequeathed to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. 2010.1.47

Claude Monet Cathédrale de Rouen, portail de la tour Saint-Romain, effet matinal, 1893 (Rouen Cathedral, Saint-Romain Tower Gate, Morning Effect) Oil on canvas 106 × 73.2 cm Paris, Musée d’Orsay, inv. RF 2001 OVERLEAF:

Intérieur de la basilique Saint-Denis, 1891 (Interior of Saint-Denis Basilica) Oil on canvas 194 × 155 cm Boston, Massachusetts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, inv. P28e15

Intérieur de la cathédrale de Reims, 1892 (Interior of Reims Cathedral) Oil on canvas 201.3 × 131 cm Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. 1922-1-30

of contemplation. Seized by fear of being compared to Monet, whose work on this theme he was familiar with, Helleu wrote to Robert de Montesquiou explaining his intention to exhibit so as “not to be accused later of copying.” In this respect, the painter need not have worried; clearly no copying took place. Of this there was no doubt for Monet, either, when in 1893 he asked Helleu to show him his Cathédrales so that together they could plan their very divergent projects.

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Statue dans le parc de Versailles, Flore, 1894 (Statue in the Grounds of Versailles, Flora) Oil on canvas, 128.5 × 54 cm Private collection

Statue de l’Air dans le parc de Versailles, 1894 (Statue of Air in the Grounds of Versailles) Oil on canvas, 100 × 75.5 cm, inscription: Grounds of Versailles Provenance: Dr. Marette’s Collection Private collection

THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES For the salon of 1894, there was a change of theme: Helleu sent his Les Grandes Eaux de Versailles au bassin de Latone. After having explored the theme of cathedrals, in 1894 Helleu turned to exteriors and to a completely different subject, the gardens of the kings’ palace: “Mr. Helleu has attacked a rather embarrassing subject, because of its complexity – he wished to paint the infinite spurts of water from the Versailles fountains, freeze onto his canvas the play of light, the showers of diamonds, all of the sumptuousness of the falling waters, whose liquid movement was an integral part of the decoration at Versailles during the period of the great king. Though he has not been completely successful in capturing the ‘uncapturable,’ at least he has sent to the Palais des Arts Libéraux a large and powerful study, a veritable museum work of art,” commented the critic Le Senne in Ménestrel, May 6, 1894. Helleu himself described to Montesquiou a “Venus in the mist, standing out against a golden background.” In his Journal, Goncourt mentions a winter party thrown by Princess Mathilde, at the end of which “Helleu showed up. He had spent the entire day outside in the freezing cold painting the statues of Versailles, half buried under the snow. He spoke of the beauty of this spectacle and the characteristics of a polar world.” And, farther on, “the sleeping palace, its flower beds, its melancholic groves wake up, Helleu’s black cane with the silver knob makes water from forgotten fountains shoot forth.” Three years later, in writing about these paintings, Montesquiou said, “All of the autumn mist described by La Sévigné in such picturesque terms, Helleu has painted them on his enchanted canvasses. October cries tears of gold onto melancholic Olympians; and it is the reflections of past autumns that briefly pause upon this fountain, where the yellowing leaves have fallen like the beads from the rosary of a musky old priest, the dead pearls from the necklace of a mistress.” (Le Gaulois, May 4, 1897) And although it might not exactly have captured the “uncapturable,” this type of painting appeared to be sufficiently commercial in the eyes of the dealer Boussod to raise his interest in several other paintings where Helleu explored the same theme.

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Le Feu, 1893 (Fire) Oil on canvas Diam. 95 cm London, Nevill Keating Gallery

FROM THE PARK GROUNDS OF VERSAILLES TO THE PARISIAN SALONS Work did not get in the way of his social life, though. Helleu, who went to Princess Mathilde’s salons, met, as we have seen, Edmond de Goncourt, whose traits he engraved in 1894. The writer replied to this portrait by penning a description of the painter as he saw him: “feverish eyes, a tormented countenance and, along with that, the skin and the black hair of a raven.” This marked the beginning of their friendship. Goncourt bought “a lot” of drypoints. Again, in 1894, Helleu exhibited a hundred and twenty of them in New York and declared to Montesquiou that he engraved over two hundred and sixty in the course of the year, concluding by saying: “I am not happy, but I seem to be making progress.” Returning to Great Britain again, Helleu met the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. Later, he would engrave the portrait of Queen Alexandra, the monarch’s wife. That same year, Robert de Montesquiou introduced Helleu to Marcel Proust in the course of an evening at Madeleine Lemaire’s salon. She was known for her paintings of flowers and nicknamed

“the empress of roses”; Dumas said of her that “after God, she creates the most roses.” Her salons were quite a mixed bag and during her “melancholic and rather lifeless” evenings, she received a collection of artists and socialites. She inspired Proust’s character Madame Verdurin in À la recherche du temps perdu. If we are to believe Philippe Jullian in his biography of Jean Lorrain, Madeleine Lemaire’s musical tastes were subject for caution: “Herman Bemberg belonged to a wealthy Argentinean family, originally from Cologne. He lived in pomp and splendor tempered with parsimony and he composed dull music, sub-Reynaldo Hahn. But Madeleine Lemaire loved it. And he bought her fans and she had him perform in her atelier…his music for a staged ‘Joan of Arc,’ for whom (according to Jean Lorrain) ‘one could have spared, after the pyre, this further torture!’” The writer and the painter seemed to get along almost immediately. Up until the death of the writer, they would meet at numerous other salons and maintain, throughout the years, a solid friendship. The most amusing of their encounters occurred in the least formal of situations, in 1908, in the park at Versailles, where the

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Fontaine à Versailles, bassin des Amours au Grand Trianon, 1897 (Fountain in Versailles, Cupid Pool, Grand Trianon) Oil on canvas Diam. 85.5 cm Provenance: Collection of Mme Gaston Palewski, née Violette de TalleyrandPérigord Private collection

writer had been driven and, as Céleste Albaret tells it, “asked his driver to stop next to a man who, accompanied by a young person, was standing at his easel painting a landscape. It was Helleu and his daughter. And Mr. Proust was quite unprepared because, as was usually the case in situations like this, when he suddenly decided to go for a ride with Odilon [his driver] he was not properly dressed or shaved. He had just slipped on a pair of striped pants and a dress coat over his shirt and wore a scarf around his neck. He told Odilon, ‘I cannot steal away now. They have seen me and recognized me and here I am, to my great embarrassment, dressed, for all intents and purposes, in a nightshirt!’ Finally, he got out of his car and spent a long moment talking with the painter and Miss Helleu. Shortly thereafter, he saw, arriving down boulevard Haussmann, the aforementioned painting, finished and mounted in a magnificent, antique, sculpted frame. He had it sent back with a letter explaining that it was much too beautiful for Helleu to offer it to him as a gift. Let us now put the original words back in the writer’s mouth (so to speak!) and quote his laudatory missive: “I am stunned by the magnanimity of your generosity, you are sublime, you have the grand heart of a Rubens, of all the great

artists. Except, you must understand me, understand that I cannot accept it, tell yourself that if you allow me to purchase it, that would be an even greater gesture of generosity on your part, because, by fulfilling my joy, you would also clear me of the cruel feeling that I have no right to keep it. And truly, I do not believe that. I would tell you, referring to this marvelous work, which abounds with everything, all of the sky, all the trees, all of the power, all of the water, all of the shadows, all of the light, but which is also woman, that which a great poet once said of a woman: We would be unhappy together Though innocent, both of us. “I would be unhappy with this beautiful thing. But if you allowed me to pay the ransom for its captivity, never would a slave to such marvelous beauty have received such respect and adoration. “There is at times a supreme delicacy in condescending to the scruples of others. By allowing me to opt for this solution, you would be, in my eyes, even greater, even more generous than you already are. “Your ever-grateful admirer.”

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Trois femmes dans le parc de Versailles, 1908 (Three Women in the Grounds of Versailles) Oil on canvas 130 × 76 cm Inscription: To my friend Marcel Proust Brest, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. D.975.1.2

Femme à l’éventail,1890 (Woman with Fan) Pastel 60 × 40 cm Private collection

Let us allow our faithful Céleste the last word: “But the painting came back again, this time signed ‘To my friend Marcel Proust,’ so that he could not refuse it” (Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1973, p. 313). In the course of 1893, Helleu had taken part in several exhibitions. Among them was the Salon du Champ de Mars, where he showed several drypoints and a canvas that was cited by Gustave Geffroy in his account of the exhibition in La Vie artistique: “the stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame, where once again this year, Mr. Helleu has proven his virtuosity.” Still ever so generous with those whom he admired and liked, Helleu offered Monet a still-life painted by Cézanne, a gift that the recipient would regret not being able to personally thank the donor for. Helleu also exhibited in London and in Munich, spent

some time in Jersey and engraved several portraits of his friend Whistler. Several years later (February 5, 1905), in an article on the coming exhibition of the London Society of Painters/Etchers that Helleu would participate in, The Times mentioned that one of the Whistler engravings was done during “a lunch at Boldini’s, where both Whistler and Forain were present. When Forain left, Helleu and Boldini took their art supplies, one using copperplate, the other paper, and went about drawing their friend’s portrait. Helleu’s engraving is a brilliant piece of work.” From the births column: the Helleu family added a new member on September 29, 1894, with the birth of Jean, the painter’s only son.

Titre de l’œuvre, 1884 Huile sur toile, 00 x 00 cm Lieu de conservation Collection

Portrait of the Artist at home

n many ways, Helleu seems to have been a man of constant contradiction: unfaithful but deeply in love with his wife; not especially fond of children, while nurturing a passion for his own; a ladies’ man, but one who cultivated strong friendships with men; harsh when negotiating prices for his work, yet excessively generous with those he loved; possessed of an irascible nature which could give way to a certain brutality, but entirely capable of the most delicate refinement; fond of travel but equally fond of his own home. Montesquiou didn’t refrain from reprimanding him: “The evil is your superficially disparaging character, the banal gossipmonger; slightly, or shall I say flippantly, ungrateful.” Perhaps the poet, famous for his skill at making enemies, should have remembered the idiom that people who live in glass houses are wise not to throw stones? While it is difficult to draw an exact portrait of Helleu, a man of so many facets, one might better perceive his nature by observing him, at the time when his career truly took off, from three different angles: at home with his family, in his relationships with close artist friends, and in the social milieu he evolved in.

Portrait de Mme Helleu, c. 1890 (Portrait of Mme Helleu) Three-pencil drawing 37.1 × 31.1 cm Private collection

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE As mentioned earlier, while still a youth, Helleu had a liaison with a Parisian milliner, which prompted the rift with his mother. This pleasant young girl was soon succeeded by a number of other delightful creatures, most of whom were red- or auburn-haired, and whose catalogue could easily compare with the mil e tre aria in which Leporello lists Don Juan’s numerous conquests. His marriage, which took place when he was still quite young, did not prevent him from pursuing a free and active love life, almost openly. But these intense extramarital activities never distanced him from his wife, to whom he constantly manifested unfailing devotion, nor from his children, to whom he proved to be an ever attentive and loving father. Lovely Alice was always impeccably dressed (sometimes by Worth and Doucet, but usually by Madame Chéruit and later Chanel, two couturiers often depicted by Helleu). She had a charm that few men, including Montesquiou and Goncourt, were able to resist. Goncourt wrote that she was incapable “of making a gesture without grace and elegance, and ten times a day he [Helleu] attempted to capture her movements in a quick drypoint etching.” Goncourt speaks the truth, for though nearly all the artists frequented by Helleu depicted Alice on several occasions, he himself featured her – whether alone, or with their children (the children also sat for him by themselves) – as his preferred model, as evidenced in an incredible quantity of painted, drawn or engraved portraits. Such works bear witness to all aspects of

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Mme Helleu portant Paulette, 1906 (Mme Helleu carrying Paulette) Three-pencil drawing 47.3 × 31.1 cm Private collection

In case he had not made himself plain enough with brush, pencil and burin, he wrote to his daughter Paulette in 1921 about his drypoint etching of her, well received in the United States, where he was at the time: “My engraving of you has had great success. That’s because I love you so very much; my feelings were engraved when I did the etching.” At times, he expressed his love in a startling way, as in the missive sent to Alice toward the end of his life: “I have no one but you. I have never had anyone but you. I have never betrayed you except by telling you what I have done. That is the truth. You are the essence of sweetness, well-being, kindness and goodness – and though my heart is old, it has never loved anyone but you. Your loving husband.” An eloquent statement about the couple, which bears witness to the rare tolerance of the intelligent woman to whom this curious declaration was addressed!

HELLEU’S TASTE

the artist’s domestic life with painstaking tenderness, and are a measure of his intense feelings for his family. There is an anecdote about Alice and Ellen being used as models without their knowledge, reported by Vollard in his Memories of an Art Dealer: “I received a series of colored lithographs from Bonnard, called Views of Paris. One day Helleu had a look at them, for fun. But, suddenly, he cried out: ‘This is my wife and daughter here, in Return from the Woods.’ Bonnard, in the swarm of the crowd, hadn’t neglected the likeness of his characters.”

Helleu’s assiduous attentions to his family were matched by his remarkable efforts to create an environment that was far more than simply pleasant. His various installations stood out from those of his contemporaries for their unique elegance, accentuated by a specific constraint: the use of white. In a period that favoured sombre, almost suffocating interiors, Helleu chose to paint his walls white as early as 1888 (a dozen years later, decorator Elsie de Wolfe imposed bright, luminous shades on the other side of the Atlantic; might she have borrowed the notion from him?). This penchant would last; white extended to curtain fabric and upholstery: he had his chairs covered in white damask (from a church decoration designed for a wedding). On March 2, 1902, critic Georges Bal wrote about Helleu’s apartment in The New York Herald: “[I]t is the triumph of white; no, not the ordinary white now found in fashionable apartments, but a special white, ‘Helleu white,’ whose uniformity is enhanced by a few muted golds, pictureless frames, fragmented garlands; where Récamier sofas, settees and Directoire armchairs are all in slightly dusty, white

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Mme Helleu lisant (Mme Helleu Reading) Three-pencil drawing 69.5 × 53 cm Private collection

wood, with cream satin coverings, in exactly the same tint as the material one drapes over furniture to protect it.” The critic proved to have a remarkable eye when describing those “slightly dusty” armchairs. Many years later (Gazette des beaux-arts, April 1967), Paulette wrote: “One day, I remember I surprised my father holding a scoop full of cold ash from the fireplace, which he then rubbed into a newly upholstered white satin settee, declaring that the tone was too harsh, and needed to be given a patina”! Thus, these ubiquitous white hues would be used to set off his paintings, objects and furniture. And what did his furniture consist of? First, it composed a decor that was free of ostentation. Even a fine observer like Proust, having known Helleu for many years, was surprised: “I never knew that the simple, elegant objects that filled his atelier were marvels he’d yearned after for a long time; that he’d followed them from one auction to the next, aware of their entire history, right up to the day when he’d earned enough money to acquire them.” Photographs from the period reveal classic furnishings of genuine worth, enlivened by attractive knickknacks. Paintings and prints, both old and modern, cover the walls – alongside empty frames! Like the Marquis de Biron, a great art collector at the turn of the 20th century, and Van Dongen later, Helleu loved picture frames for themselves; thus, in one photograph, we see him beside an Empire-period pier cabinet whose marble top supports a great Louis XVI frame (probably by Infroit), inside which appears a little oval frame, equally empty. But such elements are fragmentary, and leave one’s curiosity unsatisfied. However, on March 28 and 29, 1928, a year after the painter’s death, Maître Lair Dubreuil, the renowned Parisian auctioneer, opened the sale of Paul Helleu’s collection in Drouot auction rooms 9 and 10. The experts were Schoeller (for contemporary artworks) and Paulme and Lasquin (for the older pieces). The catalogue, which lists 221 numbers, was precise, mentioning the often prestigious origins of each lot: the auction after Boudin’s demise for several of his pastel sky studies; the dispersion of the Degas estate for two drawings by the master, and of his collection

for the Ingres drapery study; the famous Goncourt estate sale for an engraving modeled on Watteau; the Hoentschel estate sale for two large Louis XVI frames; antique collector Mme Lelong’s estate for a Louis XVI mirror; and Victorien Sardou’s estate for book bindings. As for the furniture: a late 18th century dining room table had come from the Château de Malmaison; a pier cabinet had been acquired at the Duke de Talleyrand, Valençay and Sagan sale, and so on. Aside from modern works on paper by Boldini, Boudin, Corot, Degas, Jongkind and Meissonier, paintings by Boldini, Boudin, Monet and Stevens, or his unique collection of frames, the catalogue leads one to surmise that Helleu’s taste was deliberately classical, in accordance with the elegant society of the time: prints, drawings and paintings by Boucher, Fragonard, Greuze, Rigaud, Hubert Robert, Watteau, Liotard and Monnoyer. The bright glow of gold plate and the creamy whites of his Pont-aux-Choux ceramics echoed this, in resonance both with their owner’s taste and the tone of his own work. The art objects on sale bore witness to his decorative taste, for example the carved bas-relief flower

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Élégante assise, dite par Giovanni Boldini (Elegant Woman Seated, Said to Be by Giovanni Boldini) Three-pencil drawing 71.1 × 58.4 cm Private collection This drawing was attributed to Boldini because of the signature but in 1996 Paulette Howard-Johnston authenticated it as a work by her father, whose style is readily recognizable.

motifs, trophies and musical instruments, or a painted metal celestial globe from 1800; furniture was from the Louis XVI and Empire periods, whose refinement owes more to the elegance of their line and volume than to the préciosité of their ornamentation. The Helleu collection encountered great success, and virtually every single lot was sold. Among the buyers, there were museums including the Rodin museum (for the plaster statue dedicated to Helleu by the sculptor of The Kiss) and the Musée des Arts décoratifs (for a Louis XV wall console); there were professionals (Cassirer bought six drapery studies by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and a drawing by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin); sale experts (who made bids on commission for anonymous buyers); but also figures from fashionable society. General Barès bought Le Petit Berger (The Little Shepherd), a rare etching on glass by Corot; the Princess of Poix, née Courval, bought a Watteau drawing in red chalk depicting five dog heads, and a Regency frame; André Boas bought Monet’s Barques de pêche à Pourville (Fishing boats at Pourville, acquired for 46 000 francs in 1882); the Count de Gramont bought a large Regency frame; Madame Léon Orosdi, Ellen Helleu’s

mother-in-law, purchased a Louis XVI barometer; and finally the Countess of Béhague, a legendary collector (a few fractions of her vast collections are the pride of today’s great museums), bought several lots, including a study of sailboats in red chalk by Watteau, a circular Regency frame, and the two massive Louis XVI frames which came from the Hoentschel sale (she paid 5 700 francs for them, compared to the 2 100 francs Helleu paid in 1919), as well as a Louis XV binding bearing the coat of arms of Bertin, lieutenant general of the Paris city police, which had come from the Victorien Sardou sale. In short, the auction was the beau monde’s spectacular homage to the artist and art collector, a tribute from the Proustian society he had so accurately illustrated. As so often in such cases, Helleu’s descendants had differing attitudes. Ellen and Jean decided to sell the apartment on Rue Émile-Ménier; it was subsequently divided up. Their sister Paulette bought back a part of it years later – the rooms her father had used for his atelier, just as she was keen on acquiring certain objects during the auction, those that had been so carefully chosen by her father, and which he liked to be surrounded by.

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Mme Helleu dans l’atelier de son mari (Mme Helleu in Her Husband’s Studio) Oil on canvas 81.3 × 67.7 cm Private collection

Helleu’s interest in furnishings is evident in a good number of his creations. The Pont-aux-Choux ceramics, a harp, a globe, a lyre-shaped seat all appear there, a detail that Montesquiou did not fail to remark on, comparing them, with pleasurable spite, to Sargent’s work: “Beseech the skies when he places a Sargent before you, devoid of accessories or perhaps featuring those nasty chairs on which the artist places his models, those fake Louis XV armchairs and settees, obviously fabricated on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine… Mr. Sargent can’t possibly succeed in recreating that makeshift aspect by working with authentic pieces. Oh! The ugliness of the furniture in that ‘Venetian Interior’! It can only be the Palace… rebuilt by Princess Edmond de Polignac! Unless the Countess René de Béarn also possesses a pied-à-terre in Venice.

“But then, look at the furnishings indicated in work by Boldini or Helleu. They are bibelots, they are jewels; one senses a mile off the influence of Madame Lelong [a famous late 19th century antique dealer]. These two artists almost exaggerate, in that they subvert the collector’s attention from the model, redirecting it to the very seat she poses on. Faced with such work, the eye of a Biron [the aforementioned collector] can only hesitate between the lovely woman and the lovely chair.” One measures Helleu’s luck in finding an ally in such a caustic observer. The few notes above reveal, perhaps, certain aspects of the artist within the intimacy of his own home, but in isolation they do not permit one to better distinguish his nature, for Helleu equally thrived in the company of his fellow artists, and in Parisian society.

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John Singer Sargent Portrait de Paul Helleu,1880 (Portrait of Paul Helleu) Oil on canvas 72.2 × 49.7 cm Mme Ellen Orosdi, donated to the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne, inv. CM 617

THE FIRST CIRCLE, THE ARTISTS Although he attained an enviable celebrity early on, Helleu never neglected his previous connections with fellow artists, often dating years back, even to his time in Gérôme’s atelier, just as he never ceased to admire the masters from the past, as his inclination for Watteau proves. He was even nicknamed “Watteau à vapeur” or “the steam-powered Watteau,” an expression that gave rise to a certain controversy. Quoting Proust, Paulette Helleu writes: “And finally, Elstir – like Helleu – ‘reinstated 18th century grace, but in a modern way… [H]e’s a ‘steam-powered Watteau,’ a phrase incorrectly attributed to Degas (who fiercely denied this, as early as 1902). It seems that Léon Daudet was the author of this phrase, a man whose intelligence my father recognized, but who he could not bear, because he sang at the table! My father didn’t always have an easy character and sometimes spoke his mind harshly. Having reprimanded Léon Daudet, the latter might not have forgotten the reproach, and perhaps riposted with ‘steam-powered Watteau.’”

Paulette was right to use the conditional tense here, because Henri Loyrette, in his book on Degas (Fayard, 1990), ascribes the expression to Michel Manzi. And, in his Memories of an Art Dealer, published in 1937, Vollard comments that “if, in capturing his feminine silhouettes, …the artist had a quick hand, his drawings never evoke the hurried character suggested by the expression… ‘Helleu is a steam-powered Watteau.’” The nickname stuck to the artist regardless, and even Boldini wrote to him in 1912: “Do only a few portraits, but make all of them good ones, and not steampowered!” As regards his contemporaries, several artists counted among his closest friends; all professional rivalries were erased in their mutual pleasure in being together and enjoying themselves. Our Bohemians were probably not given to melancholy, especially not Sem or Boldini, who, along with Helleu, made an inseparable trio. Helleu had met Boldini in Gérôme’s atelier, which was also frequented by several other artists he would remain close to throughout his life, like Sargent and Forain. The Helleu-Boldini-Sem trio was so famous that Willy, Colette’s first husband, sang about them in doggerel verse: Ils viennent à la queue leu-leu Boldini, Sem, Helleu Tous trois contemplant l’infini Helleu, Sem, Boldini Et l’un s’en va, l’autre idem Boldini, Helleu, Sem.1 Many of these fellows were known for their scathing wit, Sem and Forain in particular. Sem, who hailed from the Perigord, had lived in Bordeaux and Marseille before settling in Paris in

1. Each one a delightful fella! Boldini, Sem and Helleu/ Buttonholes filled with a peony! Helleu, Sem, Boldini/ A diamond, a ruby, a gem! Boldini, Helleu, Sem. (A loose adaptation, to give the flavor, rather than the sense, of the original.)

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Sem La Valse chaloupée (The Swaying Waltz) Pen and ink, 43 × 30 cm Private collection

Sem drawing,Whitney Warren and Mme Helleu on the bridge of a yacht Photograph Private collection

1900, when he was already in full possession of his great skill, the caricature. His first “Society” album was remarkable for the author’s obvious faculty in capturing distinctive physical traits, making him a witness of his time. Forain, who was both a painter and illustrator, had studied, like Helleu, with Gérôme, and was, like Sem, one of the great satirists of his time; Goncourt tells us that someone asked, “Why is Forain’s wit so very virulent?” and another replied, “Because he ate rabid cow” while a third commented, “He didn’t just eat it, he married it!” Sem and Forain were not only skilled at satiric sketches, they were also capable of devastating wit and irresistible humor. When a fellow who had just purchased a noble title from the pope asked him what family motto he should adopt, Sem replied: “No quarter!” and Forain added: “Well, at least the crown [of flowers] that I will send to your funeral will be real!” Helleu had every reason to see Boldini as a rival, for he moved in the same circles, with equal success. Older than Helleu,

he was, however, afflicted with a dreadful character. Boldini’s behavior sometimes bordered on the odious, as Henry Bidou tells us, reporting that one day he showed Helleu “the portrait he’d begun of a woman who was not exactly young, saying: ‘I’m happy with the face. You can tell she’s got dentures!’” This was all the more cruel, adds Bidou, because “the model wasn’t even out of earshot!” But the Italian’s ugliness and wickedness amused Helleu (who nicknamed Boldini the Monster). In his Journal of a Collector René Gimpel notes that Helleu “could be just as nasty as his friends Boldini, Sem and Degas” and reminds us that “Helleu said that Clemenceau spoke of art like a draper’s clerk.” One can imagine the conversations among the three inseparables, Helleu, Boldini and Sem! Of course, all of these artists didn’t simply meet to have fun; they were passionate about their work and interested in their colleagues’ output, in most cases providing a benevolent, even appreciative point of view. Much of their mutual correspondence

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John Singer Sargent Paul Helleu Sketching With His Wife (An Out-of-Doors Study), 1889 Oil on canvas 65.9 × 80.7 cm New York, Brooklyn Museum, inv. 20.640

displays the curiosity they felt about each other’s work. In this context, Helleu’s regular correspondence with Sargent, another member of his first circle of friends, is more significant than the missives exchanged with Boldini or Sem, close friends whom he saw constantly in Paris, and who therefore had less reason to write. Wherever he was, Sargent kept up regular contact with Helleu. Their friendship went back years. Helleu described it to Goncourt, who hastened to note: “finding me discouraged and poorly [Sargent] said to me: ‘Come with me to Nice.’ ‘But I haven’t got a penny!’ ‘And that’s why you’re refusing me? Well, then, here’s a pastel, which will no doubt be sold in a few years’ time for a thousand francs. Here are the thousand francs. And now, pack your trunk!!’” Recorded in 1894, this conversation took place at the start of Helleu’s career, but Sargent never ceased to show concern for him. He conveyed compliments made by one of his models, saying, “How pleased I am to know that you’re working well!”

Helleu painting and his wife, Alice on a visit to John Singer Sargent, 1889 Silver-plate photograph Private collection

He reassured him, “I’m delighted that your exhibition is so successful.” He encouraged him to paint: “[Y]ou would feel like a free man and you would do beautiful things if you went back to painting again.” He congratulated him – “Grand Central Station is a great achievement” or “I find your drypoint etchings exquisite, delicious. Whistler came to see me yesterday, and I believe he was charmed. He took them away to show his wife” – and found clients for him: “This winter, there’ll be an American woman in Paris who is a sort of cousin to me… She is quite lovely. A curious physiognomy, perhaps not young enough for your taste – but most amusing – her name is Mrs. Potter.” Sargent even took on the job of selling a Watteau painting for Helleu in the United States after the younger man had discovered it at Drouot, and made sure that he was paid rapidly, before variations in the exchange rate made him lose money. He also offered to do a portrait of Ellen Helleu and give it to her for her wedding, and he shared Helleu’s concern about Monet’s problems. Has there ever been such a loyal friend? Helleu, too often labeled a society portraitist despite being primarily an Impressionist painter, owed his artistic vocation,

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as we have seen, to the impact of seeing Manet’s Le Chemin de fer. Like Forain, he would keep up excellent relations with many of his contemporaries, depicting some of them, notably Boudin, on several occasions. Similarly, among the Impressionists, he knew Renoir, was close to Degas and very close to Monet. Apart from these three, he had at one time a certain affinity with Blanche, whose atelier he shared in Normandy and with whom he often travelled to Great Britain, a country they both appreciated. However, their relationship soured. It must be said that this was because of Helleu’s uncompromising character. One day when they were on a boat on the Thames, he threw into the water a painting by Blanche that he judged to be bad! Helleu couldn’t claim to have an easy character; but while prompt to lose his temper, he cooled just as quickly, and forgot his outbursts – sometimes more quickly than those who had been his target. Helleu dismissed the boat incident, but it marked Blanche, who continued to remember it for a long time. The relationship between the two men suffered accordingly, and from then on, the offended party turned a cold shoulder to the iconoclast – yet without wavering in the admiration he felt with regard to his talent. A host of foreign artists also figured in Helleu’s circle of friends, whether encountered in Paris or during his voyages to Britain and the United States. Among them were Tissot, Sickert, Ochoa, Madrazo y Garretta, Whistler, Gay, Stevens and many others. On several occasions, these artists did portraits of each other, leaving us with ample proof of their amiable relations. One must add another group to this “professional” circle, a group which on occasion mingled with it: the circle of society figures, the beau monde, composed of aristocrats (whether by birth or by virtue of their wealth), theater people, writers, personalities from the scientific world; those with whom Helleu shared his everyday life and whose portraits he regularly made. His relations with them went beyond what was usual between artist and model in a strictly professional context.

HELLEU’S BEAU MONDE Helleu’s lifetime corresponds to the unparalleled period of prosperity the world knew between France’s Second Empire and World War I, which in the United States extended right up to the 1929 crash, two years after Helleu’s death. Although part of its territory was amputated, France continued to shine in the arts, while Britain extended its empire across the continents and the United States exploited a wealth of resources that then seemed inexhaustible. This was the Belle Époque, or, as the British and Americans called it, the Gilded Age. In fact, only a privileged few – those who happened to be in the first ranks through their social status, their fortune or their talent – truly thrived in the Belle Époque. Gabriel-Louis Pringué, who had a kind of symbiotic relationship with them, evokes – not without a certain indulgence – the way in which the social hierarchy was structured around an “accessible world, one that is liberal, intelligent, comprehensive, skeptical, ironic, voluptuous, affable, throbbing with luxurious and spiritual pleasures, unknowing of disdain for composed of the highest aristocracy; …by virtue of marriages and reciprocal interests, associated with figures from Industry and Finance who flatter themselves by yearning to resemble them and who imitate them fairly well.” While something of a closed circle, this small milieu nonetheless welcomed “those who charmed them, who distracted them, such as celebrities, whether luminaries of the heart or of the mind, from the Academy of Medicine or from the High Court, from the Stage or from the Arts. Whosoever had a famous reputation was welcomed into their circle with open arms.” To this group was added another consisting of foreigners – essentially diplomats and wealthy individuals – a circle which blended in perfectly, and whose assimilation was favored by matrimonial unions, giving rise to a “cosmopolitan society… whose figures modeled their behavior on the top people from Finance, venerated like God the Father.” While divided up into subgroups through subtle nuances, distinctions that Proust analyzed with an entomologist’s precision, this amalgam

56 PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU

Portrait de la princesse de Ligne, c. 1900 (Portrait of the Princesse de Ligne) Pastel, 128 × 98 cm New York, Spencer and Marlène Hays Collection

constituted the beau monde, although the preferred term was le gratin, the upper crust, composed of people “in the swing”: a brilliant minority described by Paul Bourget, Henry James and Edith Wharton, painted by Helleu, Boldini and Blanche – and caricatured by Sem and Forain. The same observations held true in Britain, with the difference that the monarchy implied an organization even more rigid than that of society’s rules. Bristling with crowns and tiaras, attended to by countless servants in livery, running from salon to salon in accordance with the days set by this or that lady of the house, taking part in brilliant receptions with the same enthusiasm as their first nights at the theater, ever present at gallery openings and concerts, this frivolous and sparkling society engendered a great deal of activity. However snobbish they were, the numerous friends Paul Helleu counted in this group knew how to use privilege and influence advisedly; thus, they often exercised a decisive influence on artistic domains and, albeit to a lesser degree, on scientific research. In the United States, a country which Helleu would come to know well, society presented itself quite differently than its European counterparts. In this democracy, which defined itself as egalitarian, a wealthy minority had emerged in the mid19th century, inspiring Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class and characterized, in this work, by consumerism and waste. Here, social levels were defined by money. Often devoid of scruples, men had recently established empires in land, oil, mines, banks and railroads, building colossal fortunes that were scarcely taxed. These magnates believed that their wealth had to be displayed, giving rise to “incredible ostentation” (as John Kenneth Galbraith would later put it), sometimes to the detriment of quality and style. They formed an oligarchy which dreamed of being assimilated by the Old World’s upper classes, and packed off their heiresses, weighed down with dollars, to restore a good many coats of arms to their previous glory, bringing about a new union between two terribly different worlds. The Americans were not just seeking to establish their daughters in Europe. They were also attracted by a way of life, which they

imitated, for example by building copies at home (with varying success) of the edifices that had inspired them abroad. Many were curious, and wished to initiate themselves in customs unfamiliar to them. In this regard, two countries attracted them above all others: Britain held the prestige of royalty, and they were glad to be able to speak the language; France held other advantages because it reigned over the arts, fashion, jewelry, fine cuisine and wines – and enticed American men with notions of women reputed to be “easy.” This was the world Helleu belonged to, through both the friendships he made and the models who sat for him. While not yet the Cafe Society, it was already a truly cosmopolitan world, and Helleu was its illustrator. He fulfilled his role so well that his depictions of women, in prints reproduced in multiple examples, virtually overshadowed all other aspects of his work. Even though he owed his sensational success to the beau monde, he also owed it his relative posthumous misfortune: subsequent generations have tended to see in him only the portraitist of a particular era. They forget that Helleu was a painter, in the full sense of the word.