Some of My Lives (11 page)

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Authors: Rosamond Bernier

BOOK: Some of My Lives
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O
ne of the few times I saw Henri Matisse out of bed was when I went to call on him in the spring of 1948. I was new in Paris on my
Vogue
assignment. I had made friends with Pierre Matisse, the distinguished dealer, in New York, and he gave me an introduction to his father.
The great man was in his Paris apartment, 132, boulevard du Montparnasse, which he had taken over after the war. He received me kindly, with French formality, calling me Madame (I was a young person at the time). I had chosen my dress carefully, thinking of what might please him: it had pink and blue intertwined stripes against black. I was rewarded. He admired it. He was conservatively assembled himself, a blue tie and blue sweater bringing out the blue of his eyes; white beard neatly trimmed, every scanty hair in place.
I brought family news from New York. Communications were still difficult. He explained that he was not staying in Paris for long; he was about to go back to the south of France. He had left his regular apartment in a large wedding cake of a building at Cimiez, above Nice, called the Hôtel Régina, after Queen Victoria, who had stayed there when one only went to the south of France in winter. During the war Cimiez was thought to be too exposed to Allied bombing before the landings, so he had moved inland to Vence, where he had rented a villa called Le Rêve.
I had brought along a recent publication, a magnificent album about him with loose color plates and a text by Louis Aragon, published by the famous Swiss publisher Albert Skira, who was to play an important part in my professional life. Rather timidly, I asked Matisse if he would sign it.
“Leave it here with me,” he said, “and come back for it tomorrow.”
I followed his instructions. When I went to pick it up the next day, I found he had added a quizzical little self-portrait and inscribed it “
Hommages respectueux
.”
The combination of the friendliness of the informal drawing and the formality of the inscription—“Respectful homages”—for a young person was typically Matisse.
That summer I was in Antibes, visiting Picasso (a great throwaway line, but it happened to be true). An appointment was arranged for me to see Matisse at Vence. I had not realized what a nightmare it would be to get there. There was no public transportation, I didn't drive. I finally came upon a very ancient taxicab driver who just happened to be there on holiday with his equally ancient cab. My appointment was for noon; we left in what should have been plenty of time.
Soon, to my dismay, I realized we were hopelessly lost. My driver was from Avignon and didn't know the region. What under other circumstances would have looked like idyllic landscapes—many made familiar from early Matisse paintings—began to look like visions from Dante's
Inferno
to me.
It was one o'clock before we finally got to Vence, then we had to find the house itself, which was outside the village. To keep a distinguished old gentleman waiting is bad enough, but to keep a Frenchman from his lunch!
We finally found it, and with beating heart I walked up the little path to the front door and rang. It was opened by an extremely handsome but clearly very angry woman. It was Madame Lydia, as we always called her, Lydia Delectorskaya, who had been Matisse's model and assistant for many years. “You're late,” she practically hissed at me. I was ready to flee. But then I saw a stocky figure approaching: it was Matisse himself. “You're late,” he echoed Madame Lydia. Then, mellowing, he said, “Well, as long as you are here, you might as well come in for a moment.”
At my first visit, he had made the connection with his son Pierre; there had been no mention of
Vogue
. But now the
Vogue
connection surfaced alarmingly. “I believe you write for
Vogue
magazine?” he said. I said indeed I did. “Then you owe me thirty-eight dollars please.” I was dumbfounded. There had been no correspondence about this. I was mystified. “
Vogue
published a work of mine before the war and never paid me the rights. Thirty-eight dollars please.”
I mumbled that I had just come from the beach and didn't have any dollars in my beach bag. “A check will do,” he said. “But I don't have a checkbook with me.” I was quite distraught. “But I have one,” he said, and went to get it.
He came back. I was so new in France I had no idea how to make out a check in French. So it was under the dictation of one of the greatest twentieth-century masters that I wrote out that I owed him thirty-eight dollars.
I noticed that he was watching my pen. It was a new-model Parker that had not yet reached France. “Won't you try it?” I suggested. He did and liked the way the line would flow smoothly to the left or the right. “Please keep it,” I said. “Un moment.” He went out to get something and came back holding his own pen. “I'll keep it if you will keep mine.” Then I knew the ice was broken, and I began to breathe in a more normal rhythm. And while he was out of the room, Madame Lydia, obviously mollified by the turn of events, said kindly, “Don't worry, Monsieur Matisse likes you. I can tell. You will be able to come back.”
Not wanting to press my advantages, I began backing toward the front door, with Matisse following me. He said, “The best bistro in the region is a quarter of an hour from here. The best dish they make is a
bar flambé au fenouil
. I've reserved your table for you and ordered the
bar
, so you won't have to wait when you get there.”
That summer I was allowed to drop by several times to see Matisse. He would ask me to stand against a white door so that he could look at me. “What have you done for color today?” he would ask.
Not only was Matisse extremely elegant in his own person—in summer, when not bedridden, he wore loose raw-silk jackets and impeccably cut beige linen trousers—but he had a real interest in fashion. Those portraits of his daughter, Marguerite, wearing a succession of stylish hats were real portraits: of the hats. It might be in the family: Madame Matisse had worked as a milliner to help out family finances in the old days. In 1919, Matisse himself had pinned together a fantastic hat that is mostly an extravagant whirlpool of plumes. He clearly cared for his creation because it appears in some sixteen drawings and three oils.
Matisse accompanied his wife and daughter when they were choosing dresses; they were friendly with two of Paul Poiret's sisters,
both couturieres, Nicole Groult and Germaine Bongard. He even went to the fittings. Incidentally, Poiret owned two Matisses.
That autumn, I was back in Paris. A telephonic invitation arrived from Vence. I hurried down, and to my surprise I found the old gentleman in bed, in the middle of the living room. The upper half of him was dressed with his usual formality, again the matching blue sweater and tie, the beard immaculately trimmed, hands manicured, gold-rimmed specs.
“I can't stand up to work anymore,” he said cheerfully, “so I had my bed moved to the largest room of the house.”
There was a colored rug on the bed; the foot of the bed ended in red metal arabesques; there was a red rose in a glass by his side: all very Matisse. And a typical note of convenience and order: next to the bed was a piece of furniture he had designed himself—a combination bookcase and a series of drawers on a pivot that he could swing around to reach what he wanted. Outside each drawer he had drawn in white chalk what was inside.
A whole forest of short flowers in an army of small vases covered several tables. And almost his signature: a large philodendron plant.
A board lay across his knees, and he was wielding a large pair of scissors over a heap of colored papers. Above his head was a series of bold black ink-brush drawings of his granddaughter Jackie.
Across from him, near the fireplace, was the striped red-and-white armchair that we recognize from many of his paintings.
Reflected in the mirror behind him were colored leaf shapes climbing up strips of brown paper. They were why he had summoned me. I will explain.
Obviously enjoying my surprise (he was not known to be a practicing Catholic), he told me, “I am going to design a chapel.” It was thanks to his great kindness that I wrote the first story anywhere of Matisse's chapel in Vence. He told me how it had come about.
During the war he was gravely ill. Both his estranged wife and his daughter were away, in the Resistance. He was nursed with admirable devotion by a young woman named Monique Bourgeois. She put off following her vocation, to become a nun, until he was out of danger. Only then did she exchange her nurse's uniform for the Dominican veil.
A deep friendship had developed between Matisse and Sœur
Jacques-Marie, as she was now called. She came back for occasional visits. She liked to talk about her watercolors, and one time she gave him a little album of minute painted landscapes. When he showed her some of his own work, she apologized hesitantly: “Well … the colors are very pretty, but it is not exactly the kind of thing I like.” Matisse was pleased at her frankness and said, “You are the only person who tells me the truth.”
Matisse moved from the Nice apartment to Vence. By an extraordinary coincidence, Sœur Jacques-Marie also came to Vence, to a convent near her old friend. She found the nuns talking about projects for a new chapel. Aspiring to design one of the future stained-glass windows, she made a tentative watercolor. She was not happy with the results. She took her sketch over to Matisse to get his advice.
Matisse kindly made some suggestions. He sent for some sheets of colored cellophane so she could cut them out to her design and judge the effect. By the time the sheets of cellophane had arrived, the two Dominican monks in charge of planning the new chapel had also arrived—Father Couturier, a familiar figure in art circles, and Brother Rayssiguier—and Matisse's imagination had caught fire.
He had become completely fascinated with the problem of designing stained-glass windows. The two monks obviously seized a golden opportunity and encouraged him. Matisse offered to design first one, then all the windows, then the decoration of the interior, then the walls themselves. The monks happily gave up their original plans, and Matisse took over the entire project.
He had a cardboard model of the future chapel, with bands of cellophane to represent the future stained-glass windows: “The windows will run from floor to ceiling, fifteen feet high. They will be made of pure color shapes, very brilliant. No figures. Just the pattern of the shapes. Imagine when the sun pours through the glass—it will throw colored reflections on the white floor and walls. A whole orchestra of color!” He thought of the strong Midi sunlight almost as an element of building.
For the maquettes of the future windows, Matisse, in his precise professorial manner, explained his technique. First he paints sheets of paper with intense, flat color, then with a large pair of scissors he cuts out a shape. Many have a leaflike pattern. Madame Lydia, under
his direction, pins them onto the strips of paper representing the future windows.
“The only decoration inside the church will be black and white. You will see how the intensity of a single black line can balance the impact of the colored windows.”
He pointed out on the model: “On this side I will have a drawing of the Virgin and Child surrounded by flowers. Over here will be Stations of the Cross. Here will be Father Couturier—I mean Saint Dominic—Father Couturier posed for the drawings, so I always get confused.”
Father Couturier described to me posing for the Saint Dominic figure. He sat in Matisse's studio for over an hour, chatting while the artist made sketch after sketch in charcoal. Matisse himself talked constantly while he worked. Suddenly the atmosphere changed. Matisse became tense and silent. His assistant appeared holding drawing implements with the gravity of a nurse assisting a surgeon. Almost holding his breath, Matisse made a few decisive lines on a fresh paper. This was the final drawing of the series, the accumulation of experience gathered during the hour.
Matisse had to devise a special technique to execute the wall drawings—they are huge—and he couldn't leave his bed. He explained, “I will draw on squares of white tile which have been cooked once, then coated with a special preparation. After I have drawn on them, they will be baked again, setting the line permanently.
“These squares will be small, so easy to handle. When finished, they will be spread over the walls, giving an alive surface.
“What you see here are only working sketches—I make a great many in preparation—then the final drawing will be made directly on the tiles. I draw a subject over and over again until I really feel it in my hands.”
He noticed that I was looking at a large sketch of a girl's head drawn right on the living room door. “I did that blindfolded. After working from the model all morning, I wanted to see if I really had it. I was blindfolded and led to the door.” It looked almost as free and sure as the other sketches.
I mentioned a documentary film I had seen with Matisse actually sketching. “There was a passage showing me drawing in slow motion,”
he said. “Before my pencil ever touched the paper, my hand made a strange journey of its own. I never realized before that I did this. I suddenly felt as if I were shown naked—that everyone could see this—it made me deeply ashamed. You must understand,” he insisted, “this was not hesitation. I was unconsciously establishing the relationship between the subject I was about to draw and the size of my paper. I had not yet begun to sing. [
Je n'avais pas encore commencé à chanter
.]”

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