Over the years I have seen quite a few paintings by Marie Laurencin (1883-1956). Her style is very memorable - portraits, women mostly, black slanted eyes, pale skin, long filiforme deer like creatures, pastel colours. I would not have considered her work romantic but certainly compelling.
Her retrospective, the first in France, started a few weeks ago at the Marmotton museum on the other side of Paris. Off I went hoping that the rain would remain behind the clouds until I got there.
Marie was a natural child, adored her Mother who finally gave in and let her learn to paint on porcelaine. Marie was skilful but quite obviously wanted to be a painter. This was in 1901. She studied with Georges Braque and when she was 24 met Apollinaire and Picasso. In actual fact the story goes that Picasso told Apollinaire that he had met his future fiancé . As it is Apollinaire and Marie did have an affaire together but she left him when she was 30. Married a German Baron in 1914, which was probably not the best move as they then lived in exile in Spain over the war years. She doesn't have the same energy and although Goya and the Prado may have saved her, her paintings during this period reveal a certain sadness.
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| Apollinaire Egyption profile 1909-10 |
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| Picasso - study for Apollinaire and friends 1908 |
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| Picasso - study for Apollaire and friends 1908 |
The question of course that one asks onself, is that nearly all her portraits are women. In fact by now a famous artist and highly commissioned, she charges men more than women. I doubt though that she asked Picasso to pay her for these little marvels! And certainly not Apollinaire.....
Highly sort after by both men and women, her love affairs are common knowledge. One of the greatest was with Suzanne Moreau who had to come to work with her as a servant. Marie adopted her some 30 years later so she could become her heir.
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| Mme André Groult - 1913 |
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| The Three Graces - 1921 |
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| Passy Bridge 1912 |
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| The Dance 1919 |
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| The Three dancers - 19?? |
When she became really short sighted in the 30s her fine brush work alters and some how there is naivety for me in the paintings I saw.I think her earlier work is more interesting. Later, it was as if she could hardly see and was guessing outlines and forms. Although she considered herself to be ugly, which frankly I dont see in her autoportrait, she must also have been vain. She refused to wear glasses, even if she was apparently as "blind as a bat"
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| My portrait - 1924 |
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| Self portrait 1908 |
Famous, notorious, rich, doing and behaving exactly as she wanted to, this streak does not come out in her painting. She wasn't even influenced by cubism even if she lived and worked through that period and painted along side so many famous names, refused to be classified and turned her interest to theatre. Her style was inimitable. Contemporary celebrities loved her for her originality. Women artists were pretty rare back then. She was modern, independent and probably not too easy to live with. Even capricious but I like that kind of independance. I like her work.
A fascinating discovery too that practically all the work on view was on loan from the Tokyo Marie Laurencin museum. The museum was inaugurated in 1983 in commemoration of the 100 years since she was born. The museum started with some 100 works from the private collection of the museum director, Masahiro Takano and now contrains over 500 of her works. Now I wonder why he started collecting her work? I do know that he was the founder of the Green Cap Taxi company (are those Green taxis still in existence in Japan?), fell in love with her work and became THE collector. I would still like to know why!
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