March 7, 2026 • 32 mins
This 2019 episode explores the difficult-to-study work of Laurencin. In addition to her work not quite falling in line with the artists who were her contemporaries, her personal papers are difficult to access, are censored, and have strict limitations put on their use.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
After this week's episode on teofil Steinland, we thought we
would return to Molmarch and the French artists there with
an episode on Marie Lawrence. At the end of this episode,
we talk about the Marie Lawrence Museum in Japan, which
closed in twenty nineteen. The museum is still curating a
large collection of her art though, and the museum collaborated
(00:27):
with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia for an exhibit called
Marie Lawrence Sefolk Paris, which ran from October of twenty
twenty three until January of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I went to it. It was lovely.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That was followed by another version of the exhibit at
the Columbus Museum of Art later in twenty twenty four,
so maybe there will be other exhibitions of her artwork
in the future. This episode originally came out on June
twenty six, twenty nineteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History,
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We are just back from Paris. Indeed,
I I'm sure Holly did this too. Of course I
came back from Paris with a list of ideas for
future episodes of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh yeah, the list is long.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm planning to spread mine out, so it's not
just like all nineteenth century France all the time, even
though that is fun. This is more more twentieth century
than nineteenth. So when we had our trip to Paris,
I went out just a little early for a little
extra time, a little jet lag recovery before the trip
officially started. And one of the places I went during
(01:47):
that time was the muse de Larangerie, and I and
my husband had been drawn there by Mona's water lilies.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
But later on in our.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Visit, I found myself just totally spellbound by five paintings
by Parisian artist Marie lawrenceon he's run another part of
the museum. All five of them were of women and
animals with very simple and willowy limes and this muted
color palette of pink and blue and green and gray,
and they just seemed wistful and ethereal, and I just
(02:18):
loved them. The audio guide had a little bit about
what I was looking at and who painted them, but
I really wanted to know more about this woman who
had created these works, and that proved to be a
little trickier than I expected. She produced a lot of work,
and she was really well known and internationally sought after
in her time, but that is less true today. It
(02:41):
is especially less true outside of France. Her personal papers
are in a French library, but they have been censored,
like with words physically cut out of them, either by
her or by somebody connected to her estate, and then
they can also only be accessed with the estate's authorization,
and one of the conditions of that authorization is it
(03:01):
unpublished material from her work cannot be directly quoted. So
her biography has not gotten nearly as much in depth
attention as some of her contemporaries and a lot of
what's there is in French. And she also hasn't gotten
as much attention from art historians because some of the
nature of her work, which we will be talking.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
About as well. That didn't make any of this impossible.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It just meant that when my husband was at the
Fancy library helping me out with getting me a book,
and he sent me a photo of like, what would
you like from this shelf? I said, everything in English?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Bring it all to me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It's a little more challenging than normal, but not impossible.
Still laughing at that, so to begin. Marie Melanie Lanson
was born in Paris on October thirty first, eighteen eighty three.
I already love her as a Halloween baby. Her mother, Pauline,
may have had some Creole ancestry, and her father was
(03:58):
a government official named Alfred Toulay. Pauline and Alfred were
not married. Alfred was not particularly present in Marie's young life.
She actually didn't know he was her father until she
was in her twenties, and at that point.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
He had died.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Although he didn't acknowledge Marie as his daughter, Alfred Toulay
might have given the family some financial support. Pauline was
able to establish herself as a seamstress and an embroiderer
and provide herself and her daughter with a pretty middle
class lifestyle. They lived in an apartment at the foot
of Malmartra, usually with at least one cat, which is
another reason to love her. Of course, Pauline was very strict.
(04:35):
Gertrude Stein described her and Marie as being like a
pair of nuns living in a convent. Pauline also wanted
Marie to be educated and cultured, and their apartment was
filled with books, something that Marie would carry into her
adult life. She had a library of about five thousand
volumes by the time that she died. Marie and her
mother also took frequent trips to the Louver and other museums.
(04:59):
Pauline loved to s and Marie loved to listen to her.
She would later say that without her mother's singing, she
probably never would have picked up a paintbrush. But otherwise
their life at home was very quiet and almost austere.
Pauline was really hoping that Marie would grow up to
be a teacher, but Marie dashed that hope very thoroughly
by coming in last in every subject, at least Lamartine
(05:22):
that included art glass. Although Marie was interested in art
from a young age, by the turn of the century
she was particularly drawn to the Impressionists, the post Impressionists,
and the Fovists, including Sezan, Renoir, Manet, Toulouse, Latreq, and Matisse.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She also wrote poems.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Some of which were later published under the pseudonym Luise
la Laan. Without teaching as a possible way to support herself,
Marie turned to painting, specifically painting on porcelain through the
Sere's porcelain factory, and this was a challenging path for her.
She was extremely nearsighted, and eyeglasses were not fashionable in
Paris in the early twentieth century. Lawnsin used a lorgnette,
(06:03):
or a pair of lenses on a handle to look
at her work. She didn't let her vision keep her
from doing anything, though. She enjoyed fencing, which she would
do with glasses in one hand and a foil in
the other. This delighted Paul Poire, previous podcast subject, so
much that he made her a special costume to do
it in and let her fence in his apartment. While
(06:23):
she was studying porcelain painting, Lawrence I was also attending
regular gatherings hosted by Natalie Barney, who had moved to
Paris from the United States. Barney was a writer, a poet,
and an heiress, and she hosted a salon in Paris's
Latin Quarter that was frequented by some of the city's
most prominent artists, writers, musicians, and patrons. Barney was also
(06:44):
unapologetically publicly lesbian, a time when homosexuality was really heavily stigmatized.
She was actually one of the inspirations for the character
of Valerie Seymour and Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness,
which was one of the first lesbian novels written in English.
Barney had been the named the Amazon after being seen
riding a horse by sitting astride it instead of side saddle.
(07:05):
When she first started the salon, she called it the
Salon of the Amazon and admitted only women. She held
other women only events as well, including all women pagan circles,
and she later established a women's art academy since Lacademie
Frances admitted only men, but eventually Barney made the Salon
of the Amazon open to anyone regardless of gender. Lawrencen
(07:27):
was a regular at the salon and at other gatherings
at Barney's home. Pierre Louis, who was the author of
Chanson de Bilitice, attended the.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Salon as well.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
We talked about Chanson de Bilitice recently in our Safo episode,
but just in case you missed that one. This was
a supposedly unearthed set of erotic poems that were purportedly
by one of Saffo's students. They were really Pierre Louise's
own creation, though. One of Lawrencen's first produced works of
art was an etching titled Chanson de bilitics, which she
(07:59):
printed were repeatedly in nineteen oh four and nineteen oh five,
really experimenting with colors and techniques as she did it.
This depicts two women kissing with an oil lamp that
looks a little bit like a water fowl of some
sort in the corner. By the time she was doing
this print work, Laurensn had decided to branch out from
porcelain painting. She started studying at the Academy Umbeer, which
(08:22):
was one of the many art academies in the Manmautla
district of Paris. She learned drawing and printmaking and started
meeting members of the Parisian avant garde, including Georges Brack,
with whom she developed a very close friendship. Along with
Pablo Picasso, Brack was one of the founders of Cubism.
Brock introduced Laurence to Picasso, and Picasso introduced her to
(08:43):
Guillome Epouliniers around nineteen oh seven, telling him that she
would make him a good fiance. Apollinaire was eight years
older than Lawrence. Born in Rome as Vilhelm Apollinaire de Kestrovitsky,
he was raised in various parts of southern France before
finally settling down in Paris. He and Laurence had a
lot in common. They were both raised by unmarried mothers,
(09:04):
both connected to Paris's avant garde community, and both passionately
creative on their own. They started an intense and sometimes
volatile relationship, both of them seeming to draw creative inspiration
from each other and from the relationship itself. Sometimes Lawrencen
is described as a Pollinaire's muse. That's something that was
possibly inspired and definitely reinforced by Henri Russo's nineteen oh
(09:29):
nine portrait of them, which is titled the Muse Inspiring
the Poet. This is actually the picture that is used
for the artwork on our website for copyright reasons, meaning
it's the one we had access to because of copyright,
So if you come to our website, that is what
you're seeing, not some of.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Her own work.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And it is clear that a Pollonaire's work was changed
significantly while they were together. His early writings were explicit erotica,
but in nineteen oh nine, he published his first volume
of poetry. He also became a literary and art critic,
helping to define the Cubist movement and supporting the work
of writers and painters all across the world of Parisian
(10:10):
modern art. A Pollinaire said Lawrence invented poetry for him,
and he described her as his feminine counterpart. But this
was not at all a one way street with Lawrence
and just sort of passively inspiring a Polonaire to greatness
merely by existing, which is sort of how people imagine
muses work. They were both really drawing from and challenging
(10:32):
each other, and she was developing as an artist in
her own right while they were together. These were really
formative years for Marine Lawrence. Her work through the nineteen
teens was stylized somewhat influenced by the Cubists. She was
often working in color palettes that were dominated by a
lot of brown, and she was also exploring her technique
through creating self portraits. She did at least thirty six
(10:55):
self portraits during her lifetime, those just being the ones
that were titled as self portraits. A third of those
were before nineteen fourteen. Lawrencean continued to live with her
mother during her study of art and her relationship with Apollinaire.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And we'll get into how.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
These years unfolded after we first take a pause for
a little sponsor break. The Parisian avant garde community of
the nineteen hundreds and nineteen teens was really highly interconnected.
Many painters also wrote poetry, and many poets also painted
(11:33):
or did some other visual or plastic art. Artists and
writers were gathering constantly in cafes and coffee shops and
galleries and people's homes. Lawrenceant was an active and visible
part of this seed, and although her mother had her
doubts about Marie's futurism artist, she hosted groups of cubists
at their Momolta apartment. Laurencean was also frequently at the
(11:55):
Bateau Lavoire, where Picasso and other cubists had their studios,
and she was a regular at some of the most
influential literary salons in the city. She wasn't universally beloved
by this community, though Paulinaire praised her work really effusively,
to the point that people sometimes thought that his feelings
for her were coloring his judgment about her work, but
(12:16):
Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso's girlfriend Fernand Olivier were both
pretty dismissive and disparaging of her. Both Stein and Olivier
wrote derisive accounts of an incident in which Lawrencen was
drunk at a party. Olivier also called her affected and
a bit silly, and claimed that she was only successful
because of her connection to a Polonaire. Stein implied that
(12:40):
Lawrencen didn't really fit in with the rest of the
community either, writing quote, everybody called Gertrude Stein, Gertrude or
at most Mademoiselle Gertrude. Everybody called Picasso, Pablo and Fernand Fernand,
and everybody called Guillome Epollinaire, Guillome and Max Jacob Max,
but everybody called Marie Lawrence n Lawrence on. It's like
(13:01):
the opposite of the Madonna thing. She wants all the names.
If you're wondering why Gertrude Stein refers to herself in
third person. This is from the autobiography of Alice B. Toklis,
which was written that way in nineteen oh seven. With
a Pollinaire's encouragement, Lawrencen exhibited at the Salon des endn Pandon.
This was an annual exhibition of independent artists that was
(13:22):
established in eighteen eighty four after the official salon held
by the Academy Royal repeatedly rejected the work of the Impressionists.
The Academy Royale later became the e Col de Bouzar,
and this was the first of many exhibitions for Lawrence.
In nineteen oh eight, Lawrencen sold her first piece of art,
which was a painting called Group of Artists. It depicts
(13:44):
the artist herself with Pablo Picasso and Fernando Olivier arranged
around Guilme Apollinaire. Also in the painting is Picasso's dog Frika.
Lawrencen's buyer for this was past podcast subject Gertrude Stein,
and eventually Lawrencen would also so paint a portrait of
one of Stein's dogs, that dog being Basket the Second.
(14:04):
In nineteen oh nine, Lawrencen painted a larger version of
a similar scene known as Reunion in the Country or
Apollinaire and his Friends. This larger piece featured Gertrude Stein,
Fernando Olivier, and an unidentified third woman as the three
graces on the left hand side of the frame. Guillomapollinaire
is roughly in the center, and to his right are
(14:26):
Pablo Picasso, Margeriegio, Maurice Kremnitz, and Marie lawrence On herself.
There is a dog in this painting as well, facing
away from the center of the frame, but with its
head turned back toward a Pollinaire. Lawrencen gave this one
to a Pollinaire as a gift, and it hung above
his bed until his death. These two paintings are some
(14:46):
of the most examined in Lawrencen's work, and they both
show the influence of Cubism in her early painting, especially
the earlier years of Cubism before it progressed to being
just really abstract a lot of the time. They're both
very flat, with primitive line and lots of brown, gray
and black, and both of them show Lawrence On is
part of this group that also included Pablo Picasso. But
(15:07):
while she was fascinated by the Cubists and was nicknamed
our Lady of Cubism, Laura's son didn't really consider herself
to be a Cubist. She counted people like Picasso and
Matisse as contemporaries and credited them with teaching her what
she knew about art, but she also thought they would
be embarrassed by her association with them. On as a
(15:28):
side note, a Pollinaire was his own potential source of embarrassment.
On September seventh, nineteen eleven, he was arrested for stealing
the Mona Lisa from the Louver, which he had not done. However,
he and Picasso had gotten someone else to steal a
couple of ancient Iberian busts for them, which Picasso used
as models for his painting Demoiselle's Damion. A Pollinaire tried
(15:51):
to anonymously return these busts, and that led to him
being held for six days for the unrelated Mona Lisa theft.
He wasn't ultimately prosecuted for the theft of these busts,
but this did put quite a bit of strain on
his and Lawrencen's relationship. In nineteen twelve, Lawrence was the
only woman to be part of La Maison Cubist or
the Cubist House, which was an art installation for the
(16:13):
nineteen twelve Salon d'outumes. Like the Salon de s endependent.
The Salon d'outumes had been established in response to the
conservatism of the Academy. The Cubist House was an architectural
installation with a facade full of angles and interior rooms
adorned with Cubist art. The response in the press was
incredibly critical. This combination of a structure meant to look
(16:37):
like a family home filled with avant garde art really
struck a nerve with the public. In the face of
all this criticism, Lawrence n and a couple of other
women stood guard outside, armed with umbrellas. Lawrencen continued to
make connections and show her work. In the early nineteen teens,
she was part of the group of artists known as
the Sexion d'Or, and she exhibited her work with them.
(17:00):
She had several pieces at the International Exhibition of Modern
Art in New York City in nineteen thirteen, which came
to be known as the Armory Show. This was just
a groundbreaking and incredibly influential exhibition, and it was many Americans'
first experience with modern art. Lawrensa and a Pollinaire ended
their involvement in nineteen twelve or nineteen thirteen, after about
(17:21):
six years together, although he had a reputation as a philanderer.
They stayed in touch and apparently a Pollinaire thought they
would get back together until nineteen fourteen. That's when Lawrence
married German artist Otto van Vettien. Lawrencen said Van Vetien
reminded her of her mother, who had died at about
the same time that she broke up with a Pollinaire.
(17:43):
This was a difficult year or so in her life,
and this marriage wasn't particularly happy. World War One started
while the two of them were on their honeymoon, and
because von Bucken was German, they had to leave France.
They went to Spain, which was neutral during the war.
Nissa soon made connections among Spain's modern artists, particularly the Dadaists.
(18:05):
She also had lots of letters from France and visitors
from time to time. One eagerly welcomed visitor was fashion
designer Nicoll Grux, who was Paul Poire's sister. Lawrencein and
Greux had met in nineteen eleven and they were extremely
close for the rest of their lives, including a love
affair during at least some of that time. Nichole's daughter
(18:26):
Flora was one of Marie Lawrencen's first biographers, and in
twenty eighteen, Marie and Nichol's relationship with the subject of
a novel, Je entel desire or I have such a desire.
While she wasn't totally cut off from her friends in France,
Lawrencen desperately missed Paris and felt isolated and depressed. Parts
of the avant garde community had also really heavily criticized
(18:47):
her for her split with the Polinaire and her marriage
to a German. She eventually broke off from the Cubists,
but she continued to work, and she started to really
establish some of the visual style that she became more
known for, with lots of pinks and blues and greens
rather than the browns that had dominated a lot of
her earlier work, and depictions of women and animals more
often than her depictions of men. Many of her wartime
(19:10):
paintings also show how unhappy she was during these years,
with elements that suggest being trapped or imprisoned. For example,
the Prisoner shows a woman in blue looking out from
behind flowing pink curtains with a black pattern that resembles
a chain link fence, while Lawrencen was away from France,
Gillon Appollinaire died he was injured in the war, and
(19:31):
then he died of influenza. Van Vakien also started abusing alcohol,
and Lawrencen filed for divorce in nineteen nineteen. The split
was apparently amicable, though they stayed in touch until his
death in nineteen forty two. Lawrencean was finally able to
return to France in nineteen twenty one. A year later,
she underwent surgery to treat stomach cancer, and she also
(19:52):
had a hysterectomy. Back in France, Lawrencen secured the representation
of influential art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who all also represented
people like Pablo Picasso and Ari Matisse. Rosenberg would continue
to be her art dealer until nineteen forty, when he
had to flee France in the face of the Nazi occupation.
From her return to France until about nineteen thirty seven,
(20:14):
Laura San was at the height of her career. Her
work was exhibited in London, Paris, and New York, and
she was financially successful through commissions and the sale of
her work. She continued to work mainly in pinks, blues, grays,
and greens, often depicting women and girls in dreamy, slightly
unreal settings. At one point, she said, quote why should
(20:35):
I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are
so much prettier. In the words of an art critic,
quoted in her obituary in The New York Times, quote
she can paint a girl with eyes like a dough,
and a dough with eyes like a girl. Lawrencen also
started working as a portrait artist, and she was successful
enough to be selective about who she painted, although her
(20:56):
dealer repeatedly had to discourage her from just giving her
painting as a people that she liked. She reportedly charged
men more than she charged women, and because she found
blonde women to be the most inspiring, she charged Brunette's
more than blonde. She would also only paint children if
she liked them. One of her most famous paintings is
a French fashion designer, Coco Chanel, done early in Lawrencen's
(21:19):
career as a portrait artist. This is one of the
paintings in the Muse de l'ingerie. Chanelle is draped in
blue and black with a dog on her lap. She
has her head resting in her hand and she looks
somewhere between wistful and pensive. Another dog is in the background,
along with a gray dove. Lauren Son's portraits followed the
same style as the rest of her art that she
(21:41):
was doing around this time, so they were not really
realistic likenesses of her subjects and their clothing. So when
she saw this painting, Chanelle refused to pay for it
because it didn't look like her. Then Lawrence I refused
to do it over and kept the original for herself.
In spite of this inauspicious start, Laurencen became famous sought
after for these pastel simplified portraits. People would arrive to
(22:04):
be painted wearing couture ensalmmes, only for Laurenssan to cover
them up with scarves and drapes that she had around
for that purpose. She also had romantic relationships with many
of her subjects, regardless of their gender, and she did
a lot besides paintings and portraits of the nineteen twenties
and thirties. I mean she did a lot of those,
but other work as well. In nineteen twenty four, she
(22:26):
designed the costumes and sets for the ballet Russes Les
Beche or the Does by Sergei Yagilev. When this ballet
was staged in the United States, dancing in the principal
role was past podcast subject Maria Tallchief. Lawrencen also designed
costumes and sets for the comedy Francaise, which is one
of France's state theaters. Lawrencean was a book illustrator as well.
(22:49):
Just as a few examples, in nineteen thirty she drew
a set of illustrations for an edition of Alice in Wonderland.
She also illustrated The Garden Party and Other Stories by
Catherine Mansfield and an American edition of Camille by Alexandre
duma Fice. That last one drew some criticism because all
twelve of the illustrations she created were of the book's
(23:09):
main character, Marguerite Gautier. In nineteen thirty one, she became
a founder member of the French Society of Women Modern Artists.
She taught at Via Malakoff from nineteen thirty two to
nineteen thirty five, and she managed to stay financially afloat
even during the Great Depression. In nineteen thirty seven, a
retrospective of Lawrencean's work was held at the Great Exhibition
(23:31):
of Independent Art Masters at the Petit Palais in Paris.
She also finally started wearing glasses that year, and it's
around this time that her career started to slow.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
More about that. After another quick sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
When World War Two started in Europe, Marie Lawrence stayed
in Paris. She published a semi autobiographical collection of poetry
and in nineteen forty two that was called Lcarnette de Nuit,
and although she continued to work in visual art, her
output slowed down. As we said earlier, Most critics consider
her work at this point to be a repeat of
(24:12):
the techniques and themes that she was developing earlier in
her career, rather than experimenting or breaking new ground. She
did start to use some darker, brighter colors rather than
the pastels that had become her hallmark in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, and this change in palette may have
been connected to the ongoing deterioration of her vision. Although
she was able to stay in Paris, Germans requisitioned her
(24:34):
apartment during the occupation and she stayed with friends for
the duration of the war. Some of her art was
branded degenerate or looted by Nazis. Her politics during this
time seemed to have been contradictory. She was part of
an intellectual scene that had lots of connections to the
Vishi government, and in some ways Lawrence was complicit with
them and with German authorities. At the same time, she
(24:58):
tried to personally intervene to save her friend Max Jacob,
who was a poet and a painter. Jacob was of
Jewish ancestry but had converted to Catholicism. He was ultimately
deported to a concentration camp, and he died in nineteen
forty four. When France was liberated at the end of
World War Two, Lawrence was arrested as part of the
wave of arrests and purges known as the Operation or Purification.
(25:22):
She was briefly incarcerated at Dancing Internment Camp, but was
ultimately exonerated and released. After the war, Lawrencen was prone
to cycles of depression and isolation. Her closest companion became
Suzanne Moreau, who had originally been her maid. It is
not entirely clear if the two of them were romantically involved,
or if Lawrencen was more like Moreau's surrogate mother, but
(25:45):
they were together for almost twenty years. Lawrencen legally adopted
Moreau in nineteen fifty four, when she was seventy and
Moreau was forty nine. In nineteen fifty Lawrencen produced a
series of twenty three etchings for an illustrated collection of
safe Poetry, which had been translated by Edith de Beaumont
in her earlier book Illustrations. Her work contended to resemble
(26:06):
her paintings, with similarly flowing lines and pastel palettes. These
Sappho illustrations, though, are still flowing in style, but with
a much simpler black and white design. Marie Lawrencen died
of a heart attack at her home in Paris on
June eighth, nineteen fifty six. She was seventy two. She
was buried in Perliches Cemetery, and at her request, she
(26:29):
was dressed in white, with a rose in her hand
and her love letters from Guilloma Pollinaire close to her heart.
I think one of my few regrets about our trip
to Paris is that I didn't realize until after we
were back all of these things about Marie Lawrencen, including
her burial at Perliches because we were there, but hers
is not one of the graves.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
That we went to.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
There are so many things to look at in Perliches.
You cannot fault yourself for missing anything. Well, you could
be there really all day long, I think at that point,
because that was one of the things that we sort
of did on one of our free days while we
were in Paris. And at that point I think she
was written in my list of ideas for podcast episodes
(27:12):
for after the show as something like that painter from
the Orangery, like I didn't even have her name clearly
affixed in my mind yet. So anyway, although she had
been well known and sought after during her lifetime, her
reputation faded pretty quickly after her death. She left instructions
to Moreau not to sell her paintings or to allow
people to research her. So it wasn't really until the
(27:33):
nineteen seventies, which I think was after Moreau's death and
when there was renewed interest in women's and LGBT history,
that people started researching her life and seeking out more
of her work, especially outside of France. The nature of
her work also may have acted as a deterrent for
biographers and art historians. There was a decorative element to
Laurencean's paintings. She didn't push boundaries in the same way
(27:57):
that many of her contemporaries did. Many the Cubists, who
were so important to Lawrencen's early development and artistic network,
were creating work that was increasingly abstract, and Lawrence, on
the other hand, ultimately broke away from the Cubists, and
she painted in a way that was pretty and appealing.
She wanted to make art that people would enjoy looking at.
(28:18):
Added to that, Laurensan and her work were explicitly intentionally
feminine given the gender standards of the day. Her pastel
color palette and willowy fluid lines impressed people as just
intrinsically female, and this made it really easy to write
her off as just girl stuff rather than as a
serious work of art that was full of nuance and
(28:39):
symbolism and subtlety and sometimes humor. She clearly had an
affinity for women in her work in her life as well,
and that was something that earlier art historians seemed really
reluctant to explore because of all the stigma surrounding lesbianism
and bisexuality. Because so much of the interest into women's
art in the nineteen seventies was coming from the feminist movement,
(29:01):
Lawrensan's own preferences and opinions complicated things as well. She
really favored one type of model, one who was young, white, fair,
and slender, and she also believed that women and men
were fundamentally different, and that women's art was fundamentally different
from men's art. She said, quote, if I feel so
far removed from painters, it is because they are men,
(29:24):
and in my view, men are difficult problems to solve.
But if the genius of men intimidates me, I feel
perfectly at ease with everything that is feminine. That made
her a less appealing subject of study in the context
of a movement for women's empowerment, autonomy, equality and independence.
As a counterpoint to that idea, though, Marie Lawrencean was
(29:45):
one of very few women artists to hold her own
in the male dominated world of French modernists. Although she
was connected to the Cubists and her early work showed
some Cubist influence, she ultimately broke away from all that
and developed her own DISTINCTI unapologetically feminine style, and that
was transgressive in its own way. There's been more interest
(30:06):
in Marie Lawrencen's life and work in Europe and North
America over the past few decades, but she's been especially
beloved in Japan. Japanese collector Masahiro Takano developed an interest
in her work and acquired a huge amount of it,
founding the Marie Lawrence and Museum in Nagano, Japan, which
first opened in nineteen eighty three to mark her one
(30:26):
hundredth birthday. At the time, it was the only museum
in the world dedicated to the work of a woman artist.
The museum closed in twenty eleven for financial reasons. In
twenty thirteen, pictures from the museum were part of a
temporary exhibition at the Musei malmotain Monet in Paris. After that,
the Marie Lawrence and Museum reopened in Tokyo in July
(30:48):
twenty seventeen. Unfortunately, it closed again on January fourteenth of
twenty nineteen. When I was looking at the website for it,
because sometimes I am calendar challenged. Somehow, I thought January fourteenth,
twenty nineteen had not happened yet, and I was like,
I got to go to Japan right now, and then
I realized six months already too late. But yeah, it
(31:13):
the wording suggests that they're maybe like a future exhibition
at some point in in the future, and it's also
clear that the people who have all this art of
hers really love it and are caring for it, so
maybe it will be on public view somewhere at some
point in the future. Anyway, I love her. Yeah, she's great.
(31:37):
Her art is very pretty. It's not my jam, but
I appreciate it and think it's beautiful. Yeah, it's I definitely.
I kind of came around a corner where all five
of the paintings that were on display all were and
I was immediately like, I am here for this.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
That's the beautiful thing about artist when you have that
like visceral, just unexplainable emotional reaction to it. That is
why I love art so much. Yeah, and there's also
we'll have a link in the show notes to the episode.
Because we couldn't personally put some of her artwork onto
our website.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
We will have a link to the museum's page.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
On her that has all five I think of the
paintings that you can look at there. I think they're
really beautiful. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
(32:33):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen
Speaker 1 (32:38):
To your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
After this week's episode on teofil Steinland, we thought we
would return to Molmarch and the French artists there with
an episode on Marie Lawrence. At the end of this episode,
we talk about the Marie Lawrence Museum in Japan, which
closed in twenty nineteen. The museum is still curating a
large collection of her art though, and the museum collaborated
(00:27):
with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia for an exhibit called
Marie Lawrence Sefolk Paris, which ran from October of twenty
twenty three until January of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I went to it. It was lovely.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That was followed by another version of the exhibit at
the Columbus Museum of Art later in twenty twenty four,
so maybe there will be other exhibitions of her artwork
in the future. This episode originally came out on June
twenty six, twenty nineteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History,
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We are just back from Paris. Indeed,
I I'm sure Holly did this too. Of course I
came back from Paris with a list of ideas for
future episodes of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh yeah, the list is long.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm planning to spread mine out, so it's not
just like all nineteenth century France all the time, even
though that is fun. This is more more twentieth century
than nineteenth. So when we had our trip to Paris,
I went out just a little early for a little
extra time, a little jet lag recovery before the trip
officially started. And one of the places I went during
(01:47):
that time was the muse de Larangerie, and I and
my husband had been drawn there by Mona's water lilies.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
But later on in our.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Visit, I found myself just totally spellbound by five paintings
by Parisian artist Marie lawrenceon he's run another part of
the museum. All five of them were of women and
animals with very simple and willowy limes and this muted
color palette of pink and blue and green and gray,
and they just seemed wistful and ethereal, and I just
(02:18):
loved them. The audio guide had a little bit about
what I was looking at and who painted them, but
I really wanted to know more about this woman who
had created these works, and that proved to be a
little trickier than I expected. She produced a lot of work,
and she was really well known and internationally sought after
in her time, but that is less true today. It
(02:41):
is especially less true outside of France. Her personal papers
are in a French library, but they have been censored,
like with words physically cut out of them, either by
her or by somebody connected to her estate, and then
they can also only be accessed with the estate's authorization,
and one of the conditions of that authorization is it
(03:01):
unpublished material from her work cannot be directly quoted. So
her biography has not gotten nearly as much in depth
attention as some of her contemporaries and a lot of
what's there is in French. And she also hasn't gotten
as much attention from art historians because some of the
nature of her work, which we will be talking.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
About as well. That didn't make any of this impossible.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It just meant that when my husband was at the
Fancy library helping me out with getting me a book,
and he sent me a photo of like, what would
you like from this shelf? I said, everything in English?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Bring it all to me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It's a little more challenging than normal, but not impossible.
Still laughing at that, so to begin. Marie Melanie Lanson
was born in Paris on October thirty first, eighteen eighty three.
I already love her as a Halloween baby. Her mother, Pauline,
may have had some Creole ancestry, and her father was
(03:58):
a government official named Alfred Toulay. Pauline and Alfred were
not married. Alfred was not particularly present in Marie's young life.
She actually didn't know he was her father until she
was in her twenties, and at that point.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
He had died.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Although he didn't acknowledge Marie as his daughter, Alfred Toulay
might have given the family some financial support. Pauline was
able to establish herself as a seamstress and an embroiderer
and provide herself and her daughter with a pretty middle
class lifestyle. They lived in an apartment at the foot
of Malmartra, usually with at least one cat, which is
another reason to love her. Of course, Pauline was very strict.
(04:35):
Gertrude Stein described her and Marie as being like a
pair of nuns living in a convent. Pauline also wanted
Marie to be educated and cultured, and their apartment was
filled with books, something that Marie would carry into her
adult life. She had a library of about five thousand
volumes by the time that she died. Marie and her
mother also took frequent trips to the Louver and other museums.
(04:59):
Pauline loved to s and Marie loved to listen to her.
She would later say that without her mother's singing, she
probably never would have picked up a paintbrush. But otherwise
their life at home was very quiet and almost austere.
Pauline was really hoping that Marie would grow up to
be a teacher, but Marie dashed that hope very thoroughly
by coming in last in every subject, at least Lamartine
(05:22):
that included art glass. Although Marie was interested in art
from a young age, by the turn of the century
she was particularly drawn to the Impressionists, the post Impressionists,
and the Fovists, including Sezan, Renoir, Manet, Toulouse, Latreq, and Matisse.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She also wrote poems.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Some of which were later published under the pseudonym Luise
la Laan. Without teaching as a possible way to support herself,
Marie turned to painting, specifically painting on porcelain through the
Sere's porcelain factory, and this was a challenging path for her.
She was extremely nearsighted, and eyeglasses were not fashionable in
Paris in the early twentieth century. Lawnsin used a lorgnette,
(06:03):
or a pair of lenses on a handle to look
at her work. She didn't let her vision keep her
from doing anything, though. She enjoyed fencing, which she would
do with glasses in one hand and a foil in
the other. This delighted Paul Poire, previous podcast subject, so
much that he made her a special costume to do
it in and let her fence in his apartment. While
(06:23):
she was studying porcelain painting, Lawrence I was also attending
regular gatherings hosted by Natalie Barney, who had moved to
Paris from the United States. Barney was a writer, a poet,
and an heiress, and she hosted a salon in Paris's
Latin Quarter that was frequented by some of the city's
most prominent artists, writers, musicians, and patrons. Barney was also
(06:44):
unapologetically publicly lesbian, a time when homosexuality was really heavily stigmatized.
She was actually one of the inspirations for the character
of Valerie Seymour and Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness,
which was one of the first lesbian novels written in English.
Barney had been the named the Amazon after being seen
riding a horse by sitting astride it instead of side saddle.
(07:05):
When she first started the salon, she called it the
Salon of the Amazon and admitted only women. She held
other women only events as well, including all women pagan circles,
and she later established a women's art academy since Lacademie
Frances admitted only men, but eventually Barney made the Salon
of the Amazon open to anyone regardless of gender. Lawrencen
(07:27):
was a regular at the salon and at other gatherings
at Barney's home. Pierre Louis, who was the author of
Chanson de Bilitice, attended the.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Salon as well.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
We talked about Chanson de Bilitice recently in our Safo episode,
but just in case you missed that one. This was
a supposedly unearthed set of erotic poems that were purportedly
by one of Saffo's students. They were really Pierre Louise's
own creation, though. One of Lawrencen's first produced works of
art was an etching titled Chanson de bilitics, which she
(07:59):
printed were repeatedly in nineteen oh four and nineteen oh five,
really experimenting with colors and techniques as she did it.
This depicts two women kissing with an oil lamp that
looks a little bit like a water fowl of some
sort in the corner. By the time she was doing
this print work, Laurensn had decided to branch out from
porcelain painting. She started studying at the Academy Umbeer, which
(08:22):
was one of the many art academies in the Manmautla
district of Paris. She learned drawing and printmaking and started
meeting members of the Parisian avant garde, including Georges Brack,
with whom she developed a very close friendship. Along with
Pablo Picasso, Brack was one of the founders of Cubism.
Brock introduced Laurence to Picasso, and Picasso introduced her to
(08:43):
Guillome Epouliniers around nineteen oh seven, telling him that she
would make him a good fiance. Apollinaire was eight years
older than Lawrence. Born in Rome as Vilhelm Apollinaire de Kestrovitsky,
he was raised in various parts of southern France before
finally settling down in Paris. He and Laurence had a
lot in common. They were both raised by unmarried mothers,
(09:04):
both connected to Paris's avant garde community, and both passionately
creative on their own. They started an intense and sometimes
volatile relationship, both of them seeming to draw creative inspiration
from each other and from the relationship itself. Sometimes Lawrencen
is described as a Pollinaire's muse. That's something that was
possibly inspired and definitely reinforced by Henri Russo's nineteen oh
(09:29):
nine portrait of them, which is titled the Muse Inspiring
the Poet. This is actually the picture that is used
for the artwork on our website for copyright reasons, meaning
it's the one we had access to because of copyright,
So if you come to our website, that is what
you're seeing, not some of.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Her own work.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And it is clear that a Pollonaire's work was changed
significantly while they were together. His early writings were explicit erotica,
but in nineteen oh nine, he published his first volume
of poetry. He also became a literary and art critic,
helping to define the Cubist movement and supporting the work
of writers and painters all across the world of Parisian
(10:10):
modern art. A Pollinaire said Lawrence invented poetry for him,
and he described her as his feminine counterpart. But this
was not at all a one way street with Lawrence
and just sort of passively inspiring a Polonaire to greatness
merely by existing, which is sort of how people imagine
muses work. They were both really drawing from and challenging
(10:32):
each other, and she was developing as an artist in
her own right while they were together. These were really
formative years for Marine Lawrence. Her work through the nineteen
teens was stylized somewhat influenced by the Cubists. She was
often working in color palettes that were dominated by a
lot of brown, and she was also exploring her technique
through creating self portraits. She did at least thirty six
(10:55):
self portraits during her lifetime, those just being the ones
that were titled as self portraits. A third of those
were before nineteen fourteen. Lawrencean continued to live with her
mother during her study of art and her relationship with Apollinaire.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And we'll get into how.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
These years unfolded after we first take a pause for
a little sponsor break. The Parisian avant garde community of
the nineteen hundreds and nineteen teens was really highly interconnected.
Many painters also wrote poetry, and many poets also painted
(11:33):
or did some other visual or plastic art. Artists and
writers were gathering constantly in cafes and coffee shops and
galleries and people's homes. Lawrenceant was an active and visible
part of this seed, and although her mother had her
doubts about Marie's futurism artist, she hosted groups of cubists
at their Momolta apartment. Laurencean was also frequently at the
(11:55):
Bateau Lavoire, where Picasso and other cubists had their studios,
and she was a regular at some of the most
influential literary salons in the city. She wasn't universally beloved
by this community, though Paulinaire praised her work really effusively,
to the point that people sometimes thought that his feelings
for her were coloring his judgment about her work, but
(12:16):
Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso's girlfriend Fernand Olivier were both
pretty dismissive and disparaging of her. Both Stein and Olivier
wrote derisive accounts of an incident in which Lawrencen was
drunk at a party. Olivier also called her affected and
a bit silly, and claimed that she was only successful
because of her connection to a Polonaire. Stein implied that
(12:40):
Lawrencen didn't really fit in with the rest of the
community either, writing quote, everybody called Gertrude Stein, Gertrude or
at most Mademoiselle Gertrude. Everybody called Picasso, Pablo and Fernand Fernand,
and everybody called Guillome Epollinaire, Guillome and Max Jacob Max,
but everybody called Marie Lawrence n Lawrence on. It's like
(13:01):
the opposite of the Madonna thing. She wants all the names.
If you're wondering why Gertrude Stein refers to herself in
third person. This is from the autobiography of Alice B. Toklis,
which was written that way in nineteen oh seven. With
a Pollinaire's encouragement, Lawrencen exhibited at the Salon des endn Pandon.
This was an annual exhibition of independent artists that was
(13:22):
established in eighteen eighty four after the official salon held
by the Academy Royal repeatedly rejected the work of the Impressionists.
The Academy Royale later became the e Col de Bouzar,
and this was the first of many exhibitions for Lawrence.
In nineteen oh eight, Lawrencen sold her first piece of art,
which was a painting called Group of Artists. It depicts
(13:44):
the artist herself with Pablo Picasso and Fernando Olivier arranged
around Guilme Apollinaire. Also in the painting is Picasso's dog Frika.
Lawrencen's buyer for this was past podcast subject Gertrude Stein,
and eventually Lawrencen would also so paint a portrait of
one of Stein's dogs, that dog being Basket the Second.
(14:04):
In nineteen oh nine, Lawrencen painted a larger version of
a similar scene known as Reunion in the Country or
Apollinaire and his Friends. This larger piece featured Gertrude Stein,
Fernando Olivier, and an unidentified third woman as the three
graces on the left hand side of the frame. Guillomapollinaire
is roughly in the center, and to his right are
(14:26):
Pablo Picasso, Margeriegio, Maurice Kremnitz, and Marie lawrence On herself.
There is a dog in this painting as well, facing
away from the center of the frame, but with its
head turned back toward a Pollinaire. Lawrencen gave this one
to a Pollinaire as a gift, and it hung above
his bed until his death. These two paintings are some
(14:46):
of the most examined in Lawrencen's work, and they both
show the influence of Cubism in her early painting, especially
the earlier years of Cubism before it progressed to being
just really abstract a lot of the time. They're both
very flat, with primitive line and lots of brown, gray
and black, and both of them show Lawrence On is
part of this group that also included Pablo Picasso. But
(15:07):
while she was fascinated by the Cubists and was nicknamed
our Lady of Cubism, Laura's son didn't really consider herself
to be a Cubist. She counted people like Picasso and
Matisse as contemporaries and credited them with teaching her what
she knew about art, but she also thought they would
be embarrassed by her association with them. On as a
(15:28):
side note, a Pollinaire was his own potential source of embarrassment.
On September seventh, nineteen eleven, he was arrested for stealing
the Mona Lisa from the Louver, which he had not done. However,
he and Picasso had gotten someone else to steal a
couple of ancient Iberian busts for them, which Picasso used
as models for his painting Demoiselle's Damion. A Pollinaire tried
(15:51):
to anonymously return these busts, and that led to him
being held for six days for the unrelated Mona Lisa theft.
He wasn't ultimately prosecuted for the theft of these busts,
but this did put quite a bit of strain on
his and Lawrencen's relationship. In nineteen twelve, Lawrence was the
only woman to be part of La Maison Cubist or
the Cubist House, which was an art installation for the
(16:13):
nineteen twelve Salon d'outumes. Like the Salon de s endependent.
The Salon d'outumes had been established in response to the
conservatism of the Academy. The Cubist House was an architectural
installation with a facade full of angles and interior rooms
adorned with Cubist art. The response in the press was
incredibly critical. This combination of a structure meant to look
(16:37):
like a family home filled with avant garde art really
struck a nerve with the public. In the face of
all this criticism, Lawrence n and a couple of other
women stood guard outside, armed with umbrellas. Lawrencen continued to
make connections and show her work. In the early nineteen teens,
she was part of the group of artists known as
the Sexion d'Or, and she exhibited her work with them.
(17:00):
She had several pieces at the International Exhibition of Modern
Art in New York City in nineteen thirteen, which came
to be known as the Armory Show. This was just
a groundbreaking and incredibly influential exhibition, and it was many Americans'
first experience with modern art. Lawrensa and a Pollinaire ended
their involvement in nineteen twelve or nineteen thirteen, after about
(17:21):
six years together, although he had a reputation as a philanderer.
They stayed in touch and apparently a Pollinaire thought they
would get back together until nineteen fourteen. That's when Lawrence
married German artist Otto van Vettien. Lawrencen said Van Vetien
reminded her of her mother, who had died at about
the same time that she broke up with a Pollinaire.
(17:43):
This was a difficult year or so in her life,
and this marriage wasn't particularly happy. World War One started
while the two of them were on their honeymoon, and
because von Bucken was German, they had to leave France.
They went to Spain, which was neutral during the war.
Nissa soon made connections among Spain's modern artists, particularly the Dadaists.
(18:05):
She also had lots of letters from France and visitors
from time to time. One eagerly welcomed visitor was fashion
designer Nicoll Grux, who was Paul Poire's sister. Lawrencein and
Greux had met in nineteen eleven and they were extremely
close for the rest of their lives, including a love
affair during at least some of that time. Nichole's daughter
(18:26):
Flora was one of Marie Lawrencen's first biographers, and in
twenty eighteen, Marie and Nichol's relationship with the subject of
a novel, Je entel desire or I have such a desire.
While she wasn't totally cut off from her friends in France,
Lawrencen desperately missed Paris and felt isolated and depressed. Parts
of the avant garde community had also really heavily criticized
(18:47):
her for her split with the Polinaire and her marriage
to a German. She eventually broke off from the Cubists,
but she continued to work, and she started to really
establish some of the visual style that she became more
known for, with lots of pinks and blues and greens
rather than the browns that had dominated a lot of
her earlier work, and depictions of women and animals more
often than her depictions of men. Many of her wartime
(19:10):
paintings also show how unhappy she was during these years,
with elements that suggest being trapped or imprisoned. For example,
the Prisoner shows a woman in blue looking out from
behind flowing pink curtains with a black pattern that resembles
a chain link fence, while Lawrencen was away from France,
Gillon Appollinaire died he was injured in the war, and
(19:31):
then he died of influenza. Van Vakien also started abusing alcohol,
and Lawrencen filed for divorce in nineteen nineteen. The split
was apparently amicable, though they stayed in touch until his
death in nineteen forty two. Lawrencean was finally able to
return to France in nineteen twenty one. A year later,
she underwent surgery to treat stomach cancer, and she also
(19:52):
had a hysterectomy. Back in France, Lawrencen secured the representation
of influential art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who all also represented
people like Pablo Picasso and Ari Matisse. Rosenberg would continue
to be her art dealer until nineteen forty, when he
had to flee France in the face of the Nazi occupation.
From her return to France until about nineteen thirty seven,
(20:14):
Laura San was at the height of her career. Her
work was exhibited in London, Paris, and New York, and
she was financially successful through commissions and the sale of
her work. She continued to work mainly in pinks, blues, grays,
and greens, often depicting women and girls in dreamy, slightly
unreal settings. At one point, she said, quote why should
(20:35):
I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are
so much prettier. In the words of an art critic,
quoted in her obituary in The New York Times, quote
she can paint a girl with eyes like a dough,
and a dough with eyes like a girl. Lawrencen also
started working as a portrait artist, and she was successful
enough to be selective about who she painted, although her
(20:56):
dealer repeatedly had to discourage her from just giving her
painting as a people that she liked. She reportedly charged
men more than she charged women, and because she found
blonde women to be the most inspiring, she charged Brunette's
more than blonde. She would also only paint children if
she liked them. One of her most famous paintings is
a French fashion designer, Coco Chanel, done early in Lawrencen's
(21:19):
career as a portrait artist. This is one of the
paintings in the Muse de l'ingerie. Chanelle is draped in
blue and black with a dog on her lap. She
has her head resting in her hand and she looks
somewhere between wistful and pensive. Another dog is in the background,
along with a gray dove. Lauren Son's portraits followed the
same style as the rest of her art that she
(21:41):
was doing around this time, so they were not really
realistic likenesses of her subjects and their clothing. So when
she saw this painting, Chanelle refused to pay for it
because it didn't look like her. Then Lawrence I refused
to do it over and kept the original for herself.
In spite of this inauspicious start, Laurencen became famous sought
after for these pastel simplified portraits. People would arrive to
(22:04):
be painted wearing couture ensalmmes, only for Laurenssan to cover
them up with scarves and drapes that she had around
for that purpose. She also had romantic relationships with many
of her subjects, regardless of their gender, and she did
a lot besides paintings and portraits of the nineteen twenties
and thirties. I mean she did a lot of those,
but other work as well. In nineteen twenty four, she
(22:26):
designed the costumes and sets for the ballet Russes Les
Beche or the Does by Sergei Yagilev. When this ballet
was staged in the United States, dancing in the principal
role was past podcast subject Maria Tallchief. Lawrencen also designed
costumes and sets for the comedy Francaise, which is one
of France's state theaters. Lawrencean was a book illustrator as well.
(22:49):
Just as a few examples, in nineteen thirty she drew
a set of illustrations for an edition of Alice in Wonderland.
She also illustrated The Garden Party and Other Stories by
Catherine Mansfield and an American edition of Camille by Alexandre
duma Fice. That last one drew some criticism because all
twelve of the illustrations she created were of the book's
(23:09):
main character, Marguerite Gautier. In nineteen thirty one, she became
a founder member of the French Society of Women Modern Artists.
She taught at Via Malakoff from nineteen thirty two to
nineteen thirty five, and she managed to stay financially afloat
even during the Great Depression. In nineteen thirty seven, a
retrospective of Lawrencean's work was held at the Great Exhibition
(23:31):
of Independent Art Masters at the Petit Palais in Paris.
She also finally started wearing glasses that year, and it's
around this time that her career started to slow.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
More about that. After another quick sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
When World War Two started in Europe, Marie Lawrence stayed
in Paris. She published a semi autobiographical collection of poetry
and in nineteen forty two that was called Lcarnette de Nuit,
and although she continued to work in visual art, her
output slowed down. As we said earlier, Most critics consider
her work at this point to be a repeat of
(24:12):
the techniques and themes that she was developing earlier in
her career, rather than experimenting or breaking new ground. She
did start to use some darker, brighter colors rather than
the pastels that had become her hallmark in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, and this change in palette may have
been connected to the ongoing deterioration of her vision. Although
she was able to stay in Paris, Germans requisitioned her
(24:34):
apartment during the occupation and she stayed with friends for
the duration of the war. Some of her art was
branded degenerate or looted by Nazis. Her politics during this
time seemed to have been contradictory. She was part of
an intellectual scene that had lots of connections to the
Vishi government, and in some ways Lawrence was complicit with
them and with German authorities. At the same time, she
(24:58):
tried to personally intervene to save her friend Max Jacob,
who was a poet and a painter. Jacob was of
Jewish ancestry but had converted to Catholicism. He was ultimately
deported to a concentration camp, and he died in nineteen
forty four. When France was liberated at the end of
World War Two, Lawrence was arrested as part of the
wave of arrests and purges known as the Operation or Purification.
(25:22):
She was briefly incarcerated at Dancing Internment Camp, but was
ultimately exonerated and released. After the war, Lawrencen was prone
to cycles of depression and isolation. Her closest companion became
Suzanne Moreau, who had originally been her maid. It is
not entirely clear if the two of them were romantically involved,
or if Lawrencen was more like Moreau's surrogate mother, but
(25:45):
they were together for almost twenty years. Lawrencen legally adopted
Moreau in nineteen fifty four, when she was seventy and
Moreau was forty nine. In nineteen fifty Lawrencen produced a
series of twenty three etchings for an illustrated collection of
safe Poetry, which had been translated by Edith de Beaumont
in her earlier book Illustrations. Her work contended to resemble
(26:06):
her paintings, with similarly flowing lines and pastel palettes. These
Sappho illustrations, though, are still flowing in style, but with
a much simpler black and white design. Marie Lawrencen died
of a heart attack at her home in Paris on
June eighth, nineteen fifty six. She was seventy two. She
was buried in Perliches Cemetery, and at her request, she
(26:29):
was dressed in white, with a rose in her hand
and her love letters from Guilloma Pollinaire close to her heart.
I think one of my few regrets about our trip
to Paris is that I didn't realize until after we
were back all of these things about Marie Lawrencen, including
her burial at Perliches because we were there, but hers
is not one of the graves.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
That we went to.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
There are so many things to look at in Perliches.
You cannot fault yourself for missing anything. Well, you could
be there really all day long, I think at that point,
because that was one of the things that we sort
of did on one of our free days while we
were in Paris. And at that point I think she
was written in my list of ideas for podcast episodes
(27:12):
for after the show as something like that painter from
the Orangery, like I didn't even have her name clearly
affixed in my mind yet. So anyway, although she had
been well known and sought after during her lifetime, her
reputation faded pretty quickly after her death. She left instructions
to Moreau not to sell her paintings or to allow
people to research her. So it wasn't really until the
(27:33):
nineteen seventies, which I think was after Moreau's death and
when there was renewed interest in women's and LGBT history,
that people started researching her life and seeking out more
of her work, especially outside of France. The nature of
her work also may have acted as a deterrent for
biographers and art historians. There was a decorative element to
Laurencean's paintings. She didn't push boundaries in the same way
(27:57):
that many of her contemporaries did. Many the Cubists, who
were so important to Lawrencen's early development and artistic network,
were creating work that was increasingly abstract, and Lawrence, on
the other hand, ultimately broke away from the Cubists, and
she painted in a way that was pretty and appealing.
She wanted to make art that people would enjoy looking at.
(28:18):
Added to that, Laurensan and her work were explicitly intentionally
feminine given the gender standards of the day. Her pastel
color palette and willowy fluid lines impressed people as just
intrinsically female, and this made it really easy to write
her off as just girl stuff rather than as a
serious work of art that was full of nuance and
(28:39):
symbolism and subtlety and sometimes humor. She clearly had an
affinity for women in her work in her life as well,
and that was something that earlier art historians seemed really
reluctant to explore because of all the stigma surrounding lesbianism
and bisexuality. Because so much of the interest into women's
art in the nineteen seventies was coming from the feminist movement,
(29:01):
Lawrensan's own preferences and opinions complicated things as well. She
really favored one type of model, one who was young, white, fair,
and slender, and she also believed that women and men
were fundamentally different, and that women's art was fundamentally different
from men's art. She said, quote, if I feel so
far removed from painters, it is because they are men,
(29:24):
and in my view, men are difficult problems to solve.
But if the genius of men intimidates me, I feel
perfectly at ease with everything that is feminine. That made
her a less appealing subject of study in the context
of a movement for women's empowerment, autonomy, equality and independence.
As a counterpoint to that idea, though, Marie Lawrencean was
(29:45):
one of very few women artists to hold her own
in the male dominated world of French modernists. Although she
was connected to the Cubists and her early work showed
some Cubist influence, she ultimately broke away from all that
and developed her own DISTINCTI unapologetically feminine style, and that
was transgressive in its own way. There's been more interest
(30:06):
in Marie Lawrencen's life and work in Europe and North
America over the past few decades, but she's been especially
beloved in Japan. Japanese collector Masahiro Takano developed an interest
in her work and acquired a huge amount of it,
founding the Marie Lawrence and Museum in Nagano, Japan, which
first opened in nineteen eighty three to mark her one
(30:26):
hundredth birthday. At the time, it was the only museum
in the world dedicated to the work of a woman artist.
The museum closed in twenty eleven for financial reasons. In
twenty thirteen, pictures from the museum were part of a
temporary exhibition at the Musei malmotain Monet in Paris. After that,
the Marie Lawrence and Museum reopened in Tokyo in July
(30:48):
twenty seventeen. Unfortunately, it closed again on January fourteenth of
twenty nineteen. When I was looking at the website for it,
because sometimes I am calendar challenged. Somehow, I thought January fourteenth,
twenty nineteen had not happened yet, and I was like,
I got to go to Japan right now, and then
I realized six months already too late. But yeah, it
(31:13):
the wording suggests that they're maybe like a future exhibition
at some point in in the future, and it's also
clear that the people who have all this art of
hers really love it and are caring for it, so
maybe it will be on public view somewhere at some
point in the future. Anyway, I love her. Yeah, she's great.
(31:37):
Her art is very pretty. It's not my jam, but
I appreciate it and think it's beautiful. Yeah, it's I definitely.
I kind of came around a corner where all five
of the paintings that were on display all were and
I was immediately like, I am here for this.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
That's the beautiful thing about artist when you have that
like visceral, just unexplainable emotional reaction to it. That is
why I love art so much. Yeah, and there's also
we'll have a link in the show notes to the episode.
Because we couldn't personally put some of her artwork onto
our website.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
We will have a link to the museum's page.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
On her that has all five I think of the
paintings that you can look at there. I think they're
really beautiful. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
(32:33):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen
Speaker 1 (32:38):
To your favorite shows.
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