CONFLICTED SELVES: WOMEN, ART, & PARIS 1880 – 1914 by JULIE ANNE JOHNSON A thesis submitted to the Department of History in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada November, 2008 Copyright ! Julie Anne Johnson, 2008 Abstract Scholars describe fin-de-siècle Paris as a city of dualities, and examine its past as a series of crises or a tale of burgeoning optimism and opportunity. Historians of women and gender have noted the limitations of this dualistic approach, and have explored new avenues of interpretation. Specifically, they have shown how the combination of positive and negative impulses created a dynamic space in which women could re-imagine and rearticulate themselves. While this approach illuminates the possibilities that existed for women in a complex urban landscape, it also indicates that fin-de-siècle Paris was a contested city, one fraught with challenges for women living in the French capital. If the mingling of crises and belle époque culture had stimulating results for women’s emergence into urban spaces, it had confusing and conflicting effects as well. My thesis shows how fin-de-siècle Paris was a contradictory city for women artists, at a time when both opportunities and constraints in their profession were at a premium. I examine the ways in which several notable women in the arts – painters Gwen John, Suzanne Valadon, and Romaine Brooks, sculptor Camille Claudel, and writer Rachilde – traversed this unsettling path, and evaluated their experiences through artistic representations of private life. Far from portraying the traditional sphere of domesticity, however, which was considered an important form of artistic expression among women at this time, I argue that their depictions of intimate spaces, bodies, children, and female selfhood, were complex and often ambiguous, and part of a larger attempt to grapple with the shifting nature of identity, both as women, and as professionals. John and Claudel created interiors that were signs of independence and artistic innovation, but also sad reflections of hardship; Valadon and Brooks invested images of the female and child’s ! i body with strength and power, but also with pain and suffering; and Rachilde developed heroines who were unsuccessful in their attempts to create a unique sense of self. Taken together, these representations demonstrate that women artists did not easily articulate a vision of modern female identity at the turn of twentieth century, but rather, highlighted the inconsistencies of this experience. ! ii Acknowledgments The completion of a PhD is a significant undertaking, one that requires the assistance of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Harold Mah, for his years of dedication and commitment to my graduate studies. I have benefitted immensely from his rigourous classes and high academic standards, his suggestions for my thesis, and from teaching alongside him in a lecture setting. He is an extraordinary mentor, one who has challenged and inspired me as a student, a teacher, and as an academic. I am also grateful to Sandra den Otter and Rosanne Currarino in the Department of History, for their support and guidance, particularly during the early stages of the degree. I would also like to thank my defense committee – Mary Lynn Stewart, Allison Morehead, Sandra den Otter, Anthony D’Elia, and Harold Mah – for taking the time to evaluate my work and provide their valuable feedback. Many sources provided the financial means necessary to complete this study. I thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program for their sustained support of the research and writing of this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to Queen’s University, particularly the Department of History, for their generous funding and assistance over the years. The Timothy C. S. Franks Research Travel Fund made it possible for me to spend two summers conducting research in Paris, and various departmental and university fellowships, particularly Queen’s Graduate Awards and the Thesis Completion Bursary Award, gave me the freedom to focus on writing at critical stages of the degree. Throughout the course of my doctoral studies, I have had the opportunity to participate in various conferences, aided by several Queen’s Conference Awards, which iii have helped shape my ideas and improve my thesis in countless ways. I would like to thank Judith Owens and Glenn Clark, the organizers of “City Limits: The European City, 1400-1900” at the University of Manitoba, for their support and encouragement, and for selecting my paper to appear in the collection of essays that came out of the conference. I would also like to express my gratitude to my panel at the Society for French Historical Studies Annual meeting in Houston, 2007 – Karen Offen, Kristen Stromberg Childers, Daniella Sarnoff, and Geoff Read – for their thoughts, suggestions, and generous feedback. An additional thanks to Geoff for his contributions to our panel at the Canadian Historical Association Annual meeting in Toronto, 2006, and for showing me the ropes during my first summer in Paris. Much of the research for my thesis was conducted in libraries in Paris, and I would like to thank the librarians and staff of the Bibliothèque nationale, the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand for their kind assistance. I would also like to thank the staff of the Archive of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution for help with ordering the unpublished autobiography of Romaine Brooks, and Claudine Nicol at the Société du droit de reproduction des auteurs, compositeurs et editeurs au Canada (SODRAC), for her assistance with copyright for images by Suzanne Valadon. I am extremely grateful for the exceptional colleagues and fellow students I have met at Queen’s during my time in the doctoral program, particularly Jennifer Marotta, Robin Grazley, Sean Mills, and Matthew McKean. Their high level of scholarly achievement has been a constant source of inspiration for me, and my development as a historian has benefitted from time spent in their company. On a personal note, I would like to thank my parents, Thomas and Genevieve, and my sister, Amy, for their iv unwavering love, encouragement, and support. I could not have completed my thesis without their firm belief in my abilities. Finally, I thank Julio Rodriguez, whose own challenges over the past few years never stopped him from helping me persevere with the achievement of my goals. I dedicate this study to him with love and gratitude. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. v Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents vi List of Figures & Illustrations vii Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. A Cultural History of Paris, 1880-1914 27 Chapter 3. Les Parisiennes and the Contested City 72 Chapter 4. Boundaries of Intimate Space – Gwen John & Camille Claudel 135 Chapter 5. Bodies of Ambiguity – Suzanne Valadon & Romaine Brooks 175 Chapter 6. Rachilde and Narratives of Conflicted Selfhood 227 Chapter 7. Conclusion 274 Bibliography 279 vi List of Figures & Illustrations Figure 1: “La Parisienne,” L’Illustration, 14 April 1900, in Weber, Fin-de-Siècle France, 8, p.74. Figure 2: “Venez vous chauffer au foyer de la civilisation,” L’Exposition comique, 22 April 1900, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Banque d’Images, RC-A-53724, p.75. Figure 3: A. Grevin, Almanach des Parisiennes, 1892, 45, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, p.84. Figure 4: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La Goulue, 1891. Lithograph in four colours. 191 x 117 cm. Private Collection, p. 86. Figure 5: Carl-Hap (Karl Happel), “Les Boissons,” Le Chat Noir, June 30, 1894, in Menon, “Images of Pleasure and Vice: Women on the Fringe,” Montmartre & the Making of Mass Culture, 37-71, p.88. Figure 6: A. Grevin, Almanach des Parisiennes, 1894, 21, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, p. 91. Figure 7: “Les Suicidés du Tréport: Une Chute de Cent Mètres,” Supplément Littéraire Illustré du “Petit Parisien,” 7 February 1897, 48, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p. 115. Figure 8: “Un Suicide Étrange,” Supplément Littéraire Illustré du “Petit Parisien,” 6 April 1902, 112, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p. 116. Figure 9: “Le Suicide de Quatre Femmes,” Supplément Littéraire Illustré du “Petit Parisien,” 1897/1902?, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p.117. Figure 10: “Le Drame de L’Avenue Marceau: Suicide de Cinq Personnes,” Supplément Littéraire Illustré du “Petit Parisien,” 21 November 1897, 369, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p. 118. Figure 11: Camille Claudel, Les Causeuses, 1897. Marble / onyx and bronze. Musée Rodin, Paris, from Antoinette le Normand-Romain, Time Will Heal Everything, 63, p. 163. Figure 12: Camille Claudel, La Vague, 1897. Marble / onyx and bronze. Musée Rodin, Paris, from Antoinette le Normand-Romain, Time Will Heal Everything, 64, p. 166. Figure 13: Camille Claudel, La Profonde Pensée, 1900. Marble. Sainte Croix Museum, Poitiers, from Antoinette le Normand-Romain, Time Will Heal Everything, 66, p. 168. ! vii Figure 14: Camille Claudel, Le Rêve au coin du feu, 1899. Marble. Municipal Museum, Draguignan, from Antoinette le Normand-Romain, Time Will Heal Everything, 66, p. 168. Figure 15: Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas. 130.5 x 190 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, p. 178. Figure 16: A. Grevin, Alamanach des Parisiennes: 3 volumes (1870-1895), 1888, 14, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, p. 185. Figure 17: A. Grevin, Alamanach des Parisiennes: 3 volumes (1870-1895), 1881, 14, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, p. 186. Figure 18: Auguste Renoir, La Natte, 1887. Oil on canvas. 57 x 47 cm. Museum Langmatt, Baden, p. 192. Figure 19: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Hangover, 1887-89. Oil on canvas.