Making Love / Making Work The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt Volume II Miranda Eve Mason Submitted in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies May 2007 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Table of Contents 3 Making Work: The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt 242 3. 1 A Body of Work The Catalogue of Works Overview of Bernhardt's Oeuvre 3.2 The Labour and Love of Writing Art History 3. 3 Representing Works Apres la tempete (1876) Statuette de Sarah Bernhardt (c. 1880) Ophelie (1880) 3.4 Sculpture Training in Nineteenth-Century France: A Brief Synopsis 3.5 Becoming This Sculptor: Bernhardt's Training and Daily Studio Practice Bernhardt's Teachers: Roland Mathieu-Meusnier and Jules Franceschi Why Mathieu-Meusnier? What did Mathieu-Meusnier do? Why Franceschi? What did Franceschi do? How Did Bernhardt Not Learn Sculpture? Tall Tales, Silly Rumours, Misreadings 3.6 What Does a Sculptor Do? .An 'Aptitude for Sculpture' Drawing Anatomy Working from the Life Model Modelling Clay Casting Plaster Carving Marble ii Praticiens, Founders, Merchants, Transportation Domestic Labour, Studio Assistance, Taking Care of the Sculptor Reading about Sculpture, Thinking about Sculpture, Speaking about Sculpture 3. 7 A Sculptors' World: Bernhardt and her Peers 3. 8 Showing Work to the World: Exhibiting Sculpture Exhibitions during Bernhardt's Lifetime Exhibitions after Bernhardt's Lifetime 3.9 The Exchange of Sculpture: Selling and Gift-Giving 3. 10 Being a Sculptor, Then, and Now 4 A Pair of Vignettes on the Painting Practice of Louise Abberna 413 An Amorous Liaison Chez Mademoiselle Abbema: the Painter's Studio 4: 1 One Vignette: Clothes On, Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt, societaire de la Comedie- Francaise (1876) Heart on her Sleeve: Louise Abbema, a Parisian Dog-walking Lesbian Flaneuse 4: 2 Other Vignette: Clothes Off, Le Sommeil de Diane (1881) Conclusion 446 Epilogue Making Love Work: A Tableau Vivant on the Lesbian Love Boat, 8 [uillet 1883 - 1 July 2006 448 Appendix 1 Ophel)« Installation Costs, Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, 1881-83 464 Appendix 2 Exhibitions with Works in Sculpture by Bernhardt, 1874-1923 467 Appendix 3 Exhibitions and Major Sales of Bernhardt's Works in Sculpture, 1923 onwards Appendix4 Ownership and Sales of Bernhardt's Works in Sculpture, 1875 ~ June 1923 480 iii Bibliography 483 Tables Table t Analysis of Bernhardt's sculpture production by form 273-74 Table 2 Representative works by Mathieu-Meusnier 35 t -54 Table 3 Location by numbers with percentages of Bernhardt's existing works in sculpture (2007) 407 242 3 Making Work: The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt _ L·."U., .1e.- J>uaala. - La ty1u>do s...... la _ OUt • ~. de "'01(. ~ t.-_ N° Ii - UN COIN DE L'ATEt.lER DE SARAH BERNHARDT C'esr en clfet un coin de cet atelier celebre, rigoureusemenr reproduit, grlcc ~ l'obligeance de la grande artiste, qui :1 bien voulu permertrt d'en copier les moindre, details, <Iue ceeee scene represente, SmAll BERl<HAltDT est en renue d'atelier, verue de cene longue robe blanche que la gravure et 13 pbctographie ont rendue fimeuse, et qui ne saurait ~tre plus authentique, puisque c'esr elle-meme qui en :l gracieusemenr fait don nu Musec, Assise dans S3 grande chaise, l'ebauchoir a la main, la ttagMienne sculpre er con idere I'ceuvre qu 'elle vicnt de commencer, C'est le buste d'E\lILE DE GIllUDfII en terre glaise , qui est place sur une sellcne 11c6t~ d'elle, et qui est le dernier ouvrage de l'artiste, On 5 June 1882 the rnusee Grevin opened to the public on the boulevard Montmartre in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, The Grevin was (and still is) a waxwork museum whose defining display format was the placement of figures in elaborately reconstructed settings from 'real life' - the tableau. I The use of the tableau was not unprecedented but did allow the Grevin to stand out from other contemporary waxwork museums, notably Madame Tussaud's in London. In its first four years the sole function of the new museum was to represent news of 1 The archivist at the musee Grevin uses 'scene' in French but I wish to retain the use of the Anglicized 'tableau' instead of 'scene' in order to avoid confusion with a theatrical staging. 243 contemporary Parisian celebrities. This was announced to its visiting public by a tableau exhibited in the first room entitled 'Le tout-Paris chez Grevin' which included famous journalists, painters, and composers. Conceived of as both an artistic institution and a commercial enterprise, the musee Grevin was set up during 1881-82 by the journalist and newspaper director Arthur Meyer in collaboration with the caricaturist Alfred Grevin.' All 2 Arthur Meyer (1844/46-1924) was a friend of Bernhardt and Abbema, Bernhardt's autobiography and Lysiane Bernhardt's biography locate her first meeting with Meyer in late 1869. The latest mention of him I have found is in the 1920s when Maurice Rostand recorded seeing him at boulevard Pereire and Bernhardt addressed him by the affectionate name 'Tutur'; Sarah Bernhardt (1950) cited in Joanna Richardson, Sarah Bernhardt and Her World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977),209- 10. Meyer was a complex socio-political subject: he was Jewish, became a Catholic in 1904 when he married late in life, was at times a royalist and a Boulangist, and received comments on the amount of make-up he wore. I do not have the space here to investigate in more depth his life, politics, or sexuality, nor his relationship with Bernhardt and others around her. However, he is principally accounted for as the director of the royalist daily newspaper, Le Gaulois, from 1882 onwards. Le Gaulois featured articles on Bernhardt from at least 1879 until 1900 and she may have written for it. This relationship has received relatively little attention in biography of Bernhardt despite its longevity. At some point the friendship became three-way by including Abbema, but I have been unable to establish exactly when. Meyer is mentioned in an undated letter from Abbema to Bernhardt (c. 1882 because she sends greetings to Bernhardt's husband). The letter included a watercolour drawing which Abbema describes: 'Loulou frissait a la fois la tete de son amie [SarahJ et le ridicule, sous l'oeil vigilant d' Arthur [Meyer ... J.' She continues, '[tJa commission est faite [... J Mille tendresses a tol. Mille amities a Monsieur Damala. Je t' embrasse et t' aime. Loulou.' I have not located the original version of the letter nor the date of its sale by Emmanuel Fabius, 55 rue de Chateaudun, Paris, IXe; cutting from unidentified sale catalogue, AMBA Pau. Vanessa R. Schwartz provides a detailed account of the involvement of various individuals and institutions in setting up and running the musee Grevin until the First World War. Here I consult both versions of Schwartz's essays on the museum in: 'Museums and Mass Spectacle: The Musee Grevin as a Monument to Modem Life", French Historical Studies, 19: 1 (1995), 7-26 and its revised version, 'The Musee Grevin: Museum and Newspaper in One' in Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Pin-de-Siecle Paris (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998), 89- 148. Schwartz writes that Meyer' left the direction of the project in 1883 after many battles with Grevin'; (1998), 99. My concern is only with the first two years of the museum's existence because this is when Bernhardt's studio scene was on display. The closeness of Bernhardt's friendship with Meyer may have had some bearing on the choice of a scene from her studio at home (rather than a public stage scene) being the subject of the tableau installed under his directorship. Alfred Grevin (1827- 92) worked from 1859 on wards as a caricaturist, both independently and for Le Gaulois, Le Journal amusant, Le Petit journal pour tire, and Le Charivari. He was also a set designer and painter for the theatre (Benezit 1999, VI, 432; Thieme- Becker, XV, 17; DBF, XVI, 1199; Marcus Osterwalder, Dictionnaire des illusiraieurs 1800-1914 (Paris: Hubschmid and Bouret, 1983),459. Jacques Letheve situates him as 'the great specialist in feminine habits [le grand specialiste des moeurs feminines)' from 1858, but especially during 1870-85; La Caricature et la presse sous la I//e republique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1961), 38. He was the artistic director for the museum and retired due to ill-health in 1891 but his involvement in the museum, once up and 244 the historical information I provide here regarding the inception and ethos of the museum is drawn from Vanessa R. Schwartz's excellent and detailed historical and critical analysis in 'Museums and Mass Spectacle: The Musee Grevin as a Monument to Modem Life' (1995), revised for inclusion in her book, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Paris (1998) as well as from personal communication with Professor Schwartz." The two images and catalogue entry reproduced above all represented a tableau situated at the 'heart of the museum'. The subject was, according to the catalogue, 'a comer of Sarah Bernhardt's studio' that had been 'rigorously reproduced' down to the 'smallest detail'." running, was 'as a mere figurehead'; Schwartz (1995), 12. Instead the tearn of theatre set designers was managed by businessman Gabriel Thomas; email from Vanessa Schwartz, 15 February 2007.