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Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank Alexandra Wettlaufer for suggesting that I develop a paper that I gave at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies annual colloquium into this article for Nineteenth-Century Contexts. And then she ushered it through the peer review and publication process with her characteristic wit and good humor. I am grateful, too, to Sarah Le Pichon, who cheerfully answered my countless queries, and to Mathias Chivot, Director of the Archives Vuillard, and Peter François, President of the Servais Society, for their help and generosity. Susan Hiner and Janet Beizer discussed aspects of this essay—from BIG style and fin-de-siècle fashion to Jewishness and cantaloupes—with me at various stages and those conversations made me laugh and contributed to the final product. Research for this essay was supported by the Kress Foundation Department of Art History Travel Fund. Finally, to the late Linda Nochlin I owe immeasurable gratitude for so many things; but here, I note how much it meant and continues to mean to me that she wanted so much to hear about this project, about which she gave me her pure enthusiasm and brilliant thoughts, even as her own health was failing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Marni Reva Kessler is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet’s Paris, as well as articles and book chapters on topics related to fashion, food, urbanism, family, and portraiture in late nineteenth-century French visual culture. Her current book project explores the ways in which representations of food from this period engage with a spectrum of pleasures and anxieties associated with life in the modern metropolis.
Notes
1 If we add to that figure the numerous photographs that Vuillard took of Misia (alone and with others) and the prints that he made of her during the last years of the nineteenth century, that number would increase dramatically.
2 The Yale University Ary Gallery website gives the dimensions of the unframed painting as 15 ¾ by 13 ¾, however, according to a conservation report completed by Yale University Art Gallery Chief Conservator Mark Aronson in July 1996, the unframed picture measures 11 ¾ by 9 ½ inches. I thank the European Art Department for giving me access to the files associated with this painting.
3 Elizabeth Wynne Easton points out that the wallpaper is likely a French iteration of a William Morris design. See Easton Citation1989, 124.
4 For example, Jess Berry builds on other scholars’ claims that by painting Misia in lushly patterned interiors, he, like other members of the Nabis, sought to reinforce a broader effort to reinscribe and contain women within the domestic sphere in an effort to thwart the rise of the incipient category of the “New Woman.” She argues that Vuillard, like his colleagues, represented women as “decorative equivalents to their interior” in an attempt to squelch this New Woman’s goal of financial and social independence. She further writes: “Many of the Nabis paintings and Art Nouveau interiors sought to enact the social and political project to undermine the New Woman’s cHalleenge to the domestic in constructing the female body as ornamental form.” Though Berry finds that Vuillard’s photographs of Misia counter this visual stitching of her into the material space of her homes and instead “enabled her to embody the characteristics of social mobility, intellectual criticism, and sexual permissiveness thought to typify the femme nouvelle (or New Woman),” she claims that, “Vuillard’s paintings portray Misia in her apartment in such a way as to comply with the gendered history of the interior that affirmed women’s role as ornamental” (Jess Berry Citation2015, 120-121).
5 Misia married three times and her last name changed with each marriage: to Thadée Natanson (1893-1903), to Polish businessman and journalist who owned several newspapers, Alfred Edwards (1905-1909), and to Spanish painter JoséMaría Sert (1920-1927). Today, she is largely known as Misia Sert, though I will refer to her as Misia Natanson, since that was the name she went by during the years upon which I am focusing.
6 It is important to note that Misia’s memoirs, like most, reveal the unavoidable challenges of objectivity and recalling experiences from the past and are probably also embellished; the text is occasionally overblown and peppered with nearly incredulous anecdote. Nevertheless, it is useful to any analysis of Misia and/or any depiction of her. The account should be understood more as Misia’s representation of her long and exciting life and less as consistently reliable fact, though the information contained within it, we can only assume, bears some resemblance to the life she lived, which she describes with a keen eye for detail and an awareness of the world around her.
7 Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale’s biography of Misia is the other source most have consulted regarding the details of her life.
8 Gold and Fizdale point out that to make this escape, Misia borrowed a large sum of money from a friend of her father’s. They further claim that she stayed in a decent boarding house in the posh Mayfair neighborhood and quite possibly had an affair with the much older Belgian artist Félicien Rops while in London. Gold and Fizdale Citation1980, 26-27.
9 On Misia’s role in decorating her homes and Vuillard’s interest in representing the many patterns within them, see Jess Berry Citation2015, 119-130.
10 MaryAnne Stevens points out that the Natansons used the same floral wallpaper for some rooms on the Rue Saint-Florentin and later at Les Relais, their country home to which they moved in 1897. Based on the 1895 date of The Luncheon, we must thus infer that Vuillard represents the paper that decorated the walls in the dining room of the Natansons’ Paris residence. See Stevens’s entry on Vuillard’s Misia and Vallotton at Villeneuve in Cogeval Citation2003, 216.
11 Breteuil also points out that melon is the only type of hors d’oeuvres that would be initially brought to the table intact, retrieved, and returned once its interior was cleaned and the whole sectioned. See Breteuil Citation1860, 718.
12 Etiquette at the time would have dictated that guests would commence eating only after the maîtresse de la maison wished all a bon apétit and herself began to eat.
13 By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was standard practice to begin all meals, no matter the season, with a soup course. See Flandrin Citation2007, 59.
14 “On le sert, au premier service, avec du sucre, pour ceux qui l'assaisonnent ainsi. Mais le poivre et le sel forment un assaisonnement beaucoup plus salubre; il est même utile de boire ensuite un demi-verre d'un vin généreux, car on vu le melon, qui est une substance très-froide, arrêter subitement la digestion.” Blanquet Citation1881, 354. “It [melon] is served, in the first course, with sugar, for those who season it this way. But pepper and salt create a much healthier seasoning; it is even useful to drink then a half-glass of a generous wine, for we have seen the melon, which is a very cold substance, suddenly stop the digestion.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
15 “Elle [La Sarriette] sentait aussi la tête lui tourner, en juillet, par les après-midi brûlante, lorsque les melons l'entouraient d'une puissante vapeur de musc.” “She [La Sarriette] could also feel her head spinning in July in the scorching hot afternoons when the melons surrounded her with a powerful musk scent.” Zola Citation1873, 270.
16 Guy Cogeval, who refers to the years 1895-1900 as Vuillard’s “Misia years,” speculates that during that time, both Romain Coolus and Félix Vallotton had been lovers of Misia and that knowledge of these liaisons must have frustrated Vuillard. See Cogeval Citation2012, 81-82.
17 On Vuillard’s romantic aspirations and liaisons, see Ciaffa Citation1985, 44-45; 48-49. Ciaffa points out that “Misia, like Lucie, was married and therefore technically unattainable, and it may be that Vuillard’s feelings for both women derived from a wish to avoid the traditional context of love and commitment which had previously so acutely disappointed him. Thus Vuillard’s first serious romantic experience in 1894 and 1895 was followed by a nonthreatening, worshipping affection for Misia during the later 1890s and a clandestine involvement with Lucie from 1900 until his death in 1940.” Ciaffa Citation1985, 49.
18 The oft-repeated quote, “Maman is my muse” originated in a conversation between Vuillard and his nephew by marriage, the painter Jacques Salomon, who writes: “While we were waiting for the train Vuillard talked to me about his mother, with tenderness and reverence. … As the train came into the station he said, with a touching expression: ‘Maman is my muse.’” Salomon Citation1971, 125. For a compelling analysis of what she calls Vuillard’s “maman-muse” and “maman-motif” particularly as they relate to a larger discourse of the psychoanalytic and historical maternal, see Francesca Berry Citation2011, 55-77. Elizabeth Wynne Easton points out that: “Misia was the only figure outside of his family whom Vuillard painted again and again during the decade.” Easton Citation1989, 104.
19 See for example, Brown Citation2012.
20 Although he did paint her several times later in her life, the majority of Vuillard’s paintings and photographs that feature Misia date more specifically to between 1895 and 1901.
21 “[Récurrente] comme une obsession, insaisissable comme un fantasme, sa silhouette pulpeuse hante ce célibataire-né.” Arnot Citation2012, 26. I thank Lise Schreier for her help with this translation.
22 For an excellent and multi-layered analysis not just of the specifics of the Dreyfus affair itself, but also of its visual representation in both popular and high art, see Kleeblatt Citation1987.
23 “‘Les échos de cette agitation me parvinrent jusqu’à Villeneuve que je decidai de quitter plus tôt que d’habitude. Vuillard voulut faire une ultime promenade au bord de l’Yonne. Nous partîmes au déclin du jour. Grave et rêveur, Vuillard me conduisit le long de fleuve cerné de hauts bouleaux aux troncs d’argent. Je crois que nous ne parlions pas. Il avançait lentement dans lherbe jaunissante et je respectais inconsciemment son silence. Le jour tombait vite, et nous prîmes pour rentrer un raccourci à travers un champs de betteraves. Nos silhouettes, côte à côte, n’étaient plus que des ombres calmes sur le ciel pâle. Le sol devenait rugux sous nos pas. Je m’accrochai le pied dans une racine et tombai à moitié. Vuillard s’était arêté court pour m’aider à reprendre mon équilibre. Nos regards se rencontrèrent brusquement. Je ne vis que ses yeux tristes briller dans l’obscurité grandissante. Il éclata en sanglots. C’est la plus belle déclaration d’amour qu’un homme m’ait jamais faite.’” Sert Citation1952, 159; re-printed in Cogeval Citation2012, 88.
24 The version of the story of this walk in the summer of 1897 that appears in the 1953 English translation of Misia’s memoirs differs slightly from the one in the 1952 French original.
25 Misia Natanson to Félix Vallotton, October 23, 1897: “Vuillard me sert de mari comme vous voyez, mon Cher Vallo en aucun bien, aucun honneur naturellement.” Re-printed in Guisan and Jakubec Citation1973, 164.
26 Edouard Vuillard to Félix Vallotton, July 20, 1897: “Je crève d’embêtements confus.” Re-printed in Guisan and Jakubec Citation1973, 156.
27 Cogeval also points out that this canvas belonged at points to both the French actor Sacha Guitry, who was an infamous womanizer, and Misia’s third husband, José María Sert. Cogeval, Citation2012, 88.