CH 81 Model, Mistress, Wife
Bear glanced pointedly at his watch. "We really should get started."
Bonnie let her gaze rove over the conference room. Her colleagues shifted restlessly in their seats, their polite smiles and raised eyebrows seeming to ask what the hold-up was. In the front row, Dr. Cummings on her right and two empty chairs to her left, Geneva Duchesnay sat watching her expectantly, her face bright with anticipation.
"Just another minute, Bear. Please."
Her grandfather, on being invited to attend her practice run, had accepted with pleasure but Christine, when informed of his intention, had objected in no uncertain terms. She wasn't free to accompany him — she would've gladly rearranged her schedule given more notice but now it was impossible — and there was no question — at his age! — of his making the trip into the Institute alone. Booth had grumbled about being treated like a child, but Bonnie'd seen the wisdom of her mother's argument, and had appealed first to Max and then to Junior for help, but, much as her brothers would've liked to oblige her, they, too, had commitments. Her phone calls to Eddie had gone directly to voice mail, Sonny had a faculty meeting to chair, Adele would be working the three-to-eleven shift, Annalise had after-school chauffeur duties, Hank would be in court, and Parker and Naomi were traveling. Out of family options, she'd made one final, desperate call.
The clock ticked over, and, at the same instant, the conference room door swung outward, admitting her grandfather and then, very nearly on his heels, Trev. Awash with relief, Bonnie smiled brilliantly from one to the other as they hastily crossed to their seats, Trev grimacing an apology and mouthing 'sorry' along the way. He saw Booth settled in his chair, and then dropped quickly into his own.
Bear slanted her a questioning look, and at her nod, launched rather crisply into his introduction, which consisted of thanking their fellow conservators for making time to attend, extending an especial welcome to the department's guests, and reminding one and all that the purpose of that afternoon's presentation was not simply to give Bonnie's colleagues — and friends — a preview of her paper, but also to solicit any constructive feedback as to how she might refine or improve it. On that admonition, he surrendered the floor to Bonnie, and went to take up a standing position at one side of the room.
Bonnie's stomach was aflutter with butterflies, but as she stepped to the podium and saw nothing but encouraging smiles, and, just over her grandfather's shoulder, Gabby Franklin's very definite two thumbs up, her nerves settled, and she was able to deliver her opening remarks in a steady voice. As Bear had done, she began with thanks: to Dr. Cummings for giving her the opportunity to test drive her presentation, and to her fellow conservators for lending themselves to the exercise. She went on to welcome Geneva Duchesnay, whose in-laws' generosity in donating the Lebrun to the Jeff she gratefully recognized, and, lastly, she thanked her grandfather for his help and encouragement, without which, she assured the assembly, she could not have brought her inquiry to a successful close.
Preliminaries over, she switched gears, and, clicking an image of the Jeff's Coupe d'amour onto the screen behind and to her right, plunged into her presentation proper. "In the annals of art history," she began, "there is hardly a more common story than that of a male artist becoming enamored of his female model, taking her, initially, as his mistress and later, sometimes after a child or two, making her his wife. Camille Monet, Marie-Hortense Cézanne, Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti… these are women, among many others, whose names and life stories we know today thanks to their having been immortalized many times over in their celebrated lovers' paintings. The fascination these women exerted over their partners, their mysterious ability to spark the creative process and inspire great works of art has naturally led scholars and art lovers alike to wonder about them as individuals. Articles, novels, and, in the case of Marie van Goethem, even a ballet, have been written in an attempt to understand the secret of their appeal and explore their role as muses.
"In his dealings with models and with women in general, Antoine Lebrun, a notorious libertine, could be seen as the reverse of the Monet, Cézanne and company coin. And yet, as has only recently come to light, Lebrun, like them, married one of his models. Their relationship didn't follow the usual course, it's true: she posed for him only once (that we're sure of), didn't subsequently become his mistress, and married him after they'd been estranged for some thirty years, but she nonetheless played a prominent — if not, indeed, pivotal — role in shaping the course of Lebrun's life and art. Her name, when she posed for La Coupe d'amour, was Madeleine Chiasson, and hers, I feel sure you'll agree, is as remarkable a life journey as that of any art history's better-known muses."
Bonnie quickly summarized Madeleine's early years: her precarious childhood as a peasant's daughter, her mother's death and, through a maternal aunt's good offices, her being hired on as domestic help in the prosperous Lebrun household. "She was eleven or twelve, hardly more than a child, when she went to work for Hervé Lebrun." La Coupe d'amour disappeared from the screen, and was replaced by another of Antoine Lebrun's paintings. "It's impossible to know for sure, but not unreasonable to assume that it was Madeleine and her aunt, Bérénice Trouville, who posed for the female figures in this early Lebrun work. Exhibited at the Salon of 1770, when Lebrun was only twenty, La famille tranquille would have been painted when Madeleine was thirteen or fourteen, slightly older than the girl in the painting appears to be, but then, having been malnourished as a child, Madeleine would likely have been undersized and younger-looking than her age.
"La famille tranquille earned Lebrun the prestigious Bourse de Rome, a prize that afforded him the opportunity to continue his training at the Académie des Beaux Arts' extension school in that city. It was during this stay abroad that he met and struck up a close friendship with fellow painter, Eugène Blanchard, the son of a minor French nobleman. Once they'd completed their studies, instead of immediately returning to Paris, the two spent several months traveling the Continent together, making pilgrimages to the artistic capitals of Europe, as well as taking in the majesty of the Alps and other scenic wonders en route.
"All in all, Lebrun's absence from Paris lasted nearly four years, and when he did return, flush with his new experiences and eager to establish himself in elite French art circles, he discovered that time had not stood still in his father's household, either. The serving girl who'd been a scrawny child when he'd left had blossomed into a breathtaking adolescent with an angel's face and a woman's nicely rounded body. Did the twenty-four-year-old Lebrun proceed to lose his heart to her?" A detail of La Coupe d'amour, several times enlarged and showing just the female figure, popped up on the screen. "It would hardly be surprising if he did. If this depiction of her is at all faithful, we can see from the roundness of her cheek, her rosy complexion, and her wide-eyed wonder that she had, in addition to her physical beauty, all the considerable charms of youth: freshness, innocence, vulnerability. Given La Coupe d'amour's theme of a couple's heady rush toward love, it's even conceivable that Lebrun found his inspiration for the painting in his own sudden attraction to, and budding passion for, Madeleine.
"Apart from his sensitive treatment of the female figure, there is, admittedly, nothing in La Coupe d'amour to suggest that Lebrun had tender feelings for his model. Until, that is, one looks beneath the surface." On the screen, the x-ray image of the painting's pentimento slipped into view. "As you can see, Lebrun's original concept for the scene differed dramatically from the version we know. In this early stage, the male figure's head was much closer to the female's, and, more importantly, he was looking across his shoulder at her, his gaze fixed on her face. His focusing on her when one might reasonably expect him to be enchanted by the fountain speaks volumes about his delight in, and attachment to, his companion. We can ask ourselves, I believe: does the male figure reflect Lebrun's own fascination with Madeleine and, if so, what does it mean that he revised that figure so radically over the course of completing the painting?
"One school of thought would attribute the reworking of the male figure's head and upper body to a simple matter of aesthetics, to Lebrun's rejecting the initial pose as clumsy and anatomically implausible. That may, indeed, have been a consideration, but there is also the curious fact that the 'about-face' in La Coupe d'amour is contemporaneous with other striking changes in Lebrun's life and art, changes that have long mystified scholars. Despite the resounding success of La Coupe d'amour at the Salon of 1775, Lebrun abruptly abandoned the academic career path he'd been pursuing in favor of selling his talent to the moneyed and decadent noble class. He stopped drawing his subjects from classical myth and history and turned instead to producing titillating, bawdy scenes suitable only for hanging on the walls of his clients' private chambers. Finally, he transformed from a young man of unblemished reputation into a man widely known as one of the foremost womanizers of his day.
"Michel Doucette, in his as yet unpublished study of Lebrun, raises the question of what might have occurred around the time of his painting La Coupe d'amour to provoke such drastic course changes in Lebrun's art and life. All he can point to along those lines, however, is Lebrun's having severed all ties with his close friend Blanchard, a change of heart that, again, defies explanation. To all appearances, Blanchard did nothing to deserve such treatment, but that is only because, to date, no one has made the vital connection between the woman Blanchard set up as his mistress in '76 and a certain young servant-turned-model: Madeleine Chiasson."
A buzz of amazement broke out at this revelation, and Bonnie, gratified, allowed herself a small smile while she waited for it to die down. "To give Blanchard his due," she continued, "he was very discreet. He arranged a respectable marriage for Madeleine to Yves Lavallière, a tenant farmer on his family's land more of an age to be her father than her husband. That this was a sham marriage, contrived for Blanchard's convenience and Madeleine's protection, was an open secret in the neighborhood, as was the true identity of the man who fathered Madeleine's two children, a son, Édouard, in '78 and a daughter, Élodie, two years later."
Bonnie communicated the photo of Blanchard's painting of a young woman carving initials in a tree to the screen. "In the early years of their liaison, before Blanchard succeeded to the barony and cut back on his painting, Madeleine was his model as well as mistress. In this painting, one of a dozen recently discovered by the current-day Lavallières in an attic room of their farmhouse, Madeleine still has so much the look of late adolescence about her, we can deduce it was likely painted soon after her marriage — note the initials 'M. L.' carved in the bark — and so, not very long after La Coupe d'amour.
"Working backward in time, we can piece together what must have happened the year before: as a trusted friend and colleague, Blanchard would've had free run of Lebrun's studio, and it was doubtless during one of these visits that he made Madeleine's acquaintance. Whatever doubts we may entertain about Lebrun's feelings for his model, given his subsequent actions, there can be no question that Blanchard fell deeply under her spell. He couldn't offer marriage — for that matter, neither could Lebrun. Madeleine's lowly status made such an alliance unthinkable — but he did have the means and position to propose setting her up in her own household, a proposition Madeleine obviously accepted, whether joyfully because she returned his feelings or pragmatically because of the economic advantages it offered, we may never know.
"It is interesting to note, in this context, that this painting might have supplied an answer to the question of Madeleine's feelings, but stops short: the space meant for the beloved's initials remains conspicuously blank. With her head bowed and her knife pressed against the bark, the young woman might be about to start cutting, or she might, equally, be hesitating, not bold enough, or perhaps not free, to betray the identity of the man she loves. Blanchard's presenting her in the tree's shadow and in a mist-shrouded forest lends the scene an air of both mystery and melancholy. Why, we might ask, did Blanchard refrain from completing the carving with his own initials? Was it in rueful recognition that their union was irregular and couldn't be openly acknowledged, or did he rather have doubts as to whether his were the initials truly engraved on her heart?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Bonnie saw Bear tap his watch, a signal that she was running over time. She hastily posted Blanchard's painting of Madeleine as a young mother bending over her infant's cradle, and resumed briskly, "Whatever her private feelings may have been, Madeleine apparently fulfilled her end of the bargain with Blanchard admirably. Their liaison endured until his death at age forty-nine and, over that twenty-three-year span, though Blanchard married as suited his station and fathered three legitimate sons, he lavished so much of his time and wealth on Madeleine and her children that, according to a novel closely based upon her life, Eugène's baroness was consumed with resentment and impotent jealousy. Something of the depth of Blanchard's love for Madeleine can also be gleaned from his going above and beyond the terms of their agreement and not only providing financially for her and their brood, but also, for her sake, taking steps to lift her father, brothers and sisters out of poverty. He was careful in addition to make generous provision for her, Édouard and Élodie after his death: Madeleine was bequeathed a large sum of money, Édouard was given freehold of the farm, and Élodie was left a substantial dowery. In the end, I think it can be said of Blanchard that he gave Madeleine no more cause for complaint or regret about their arrangement than she'd given him.
"With Blanchard's passing, Madeleine entered a new stage in her life. As a forty-two-year-old matron with a full-grown son and a daughter of marriageable age, she might've settled into a quiet life, staying on at the farm until her son married and her daughter found a husband, and then living out her remaining years in one or another of their households, helping to raise the grandchildren who came along. Such, however, was not Madeleine's fate. By 1804, as her aunt Bérénice's death record attests, she was no longer living in the country but in Paris, and had been for, perhaps, several years. According to Blanchard family history, immediately upon her husband's death in 1799, Eugène's baroness hounded Madeleine out of the neighborhood, but, given her aunt's great age and possible infirmity, it's more likely Madeleine voluntarily relocated to Paris to care for her aunt.
"It is, then, in the capital and sometime in the first years of the new century that Madeleine and Lebrun's paths cross again. As to how this came about, we can only speculate, but it seems safe to assume it was their common concern for Mme Trouville — aunt to one, and mother-substitute to the other — that resulted in their coming into contact again. What must it have been like for them to meet after so much time? The answer, I suppose, must depend on how they parted. Lebrun, we know, could not forgive Blanchard for so far betraying their friendship as to lure away the girl he had an obvious interest in, if only as his model, but what of the girl herself? Was Lebrun so disenchanted by Madeleine's welcoming, or at least not rebuffing, Blanchard's attentions, that he felt betrayed by her as well?"
She paused to put two images — the pentimento and a close-up of the final version of La Coupe d'amour's couple — side by side on the screen. "I suggest that the answer is yes, and that the reworking of the male figure's position is a reflection of Lebrun's change of heart toward Madeleine. Just as, in the original pose, the figure can be read as expressing some of the artist's own attraction to his model, so, too, the revised figure, with his gaze redirected toward the fountain, and his head and torso further forward as if he's straining away from his lover, can be seen as mirroring Lebrun's turning away from Madeleine and resolving to move on from his infatuation with her.
"As for Madeleine, I think it's noteworthy that Lebrun portrays the female figure as unvarying; her eyes remain fixed throughout on the chalice. She appears in the pentimento to be as unconscious of the male's regard as, in the finished version, she is of its absence, which suggests that Madeleine had no knowledge of Lebrun's feelings and, by extension, that he never revealed them to her.
"Given their awkward history, one might assume they met now and then while Mme Trouville lived and parted ways for good once she died, but surprisingly, the year 1805 finds Lebrun and Madeleine man and wife instead. Contemporaries who knew Madeleine only as a widow with a small, independent fortune attributed the marriage to Lebrun's needing money, and it's undeniable that Lebrun's finances were in bad repair at the time. The Revolution had decimated his client base and his racy style of painting had gone out of fashion, leaving him to eke out a meager living as a low-level civil servant in the Ministry of Culture. Nonetheless, considering their past, I find it hard to believe that Lebrun's motives were strictly, or even primarily, monetary. After all, he may have needed to marry, but Madeleine was under no such pressure, and what did he have to offer that would've enticed her into marriage? His social position was not appreciably better than hers, he had no powerful or influential connections, and if a husband's protection and companionship was all she wanted, she was enough of a matrimonial prize that she would likely have had her pick of other suitors.
"So, if not for money or advantage, why did they marry? Until some long-lost trove of letters or an intimate diary surfaces, we can't know for certain, but I, for one, would like to believe they found the courage to revisit the past, forgive each other and themselves for their youthful mistakes and offenses, rekindling in the process the love that, but for Blanchard's interference, might've bloomed between them some thirty years before." Bonnie stopped to smile at her own expense. "But that's just the hopeless romantic in me speaking, and the truth might very well be different. I can report that their marriage lasted until Lebrun's death in 1815, and that Madeleine survived him, though for how long, and where and how she died we don't as yet know, and might never learn."
In preparation for summing up, Bonnie displayed Lebrun's and Blanchard's portraits of Madeleine in profile in a line across the screen. "When I first began investigating the woman behind the figure in La Coupe d'amour, I was advised that it was a waste of time, that knowing who the model was, even if I succeeded in identifying her, would shed no light on Lebrun as a man or artist. That proved not to be the case: Madeleine Chiasson was not a random working girl with only a passing relation to Lebrun, but a servant in his father's house whom he'd known for years and who may've posed for him the first time when she was a very young teen. Learning something of her life, particularly of her deciding to leave the Lebruns' service and become Blanchard's mistress, has provided a valuable glimpse into the circumstances surrounding La Coupe d'amour's creation, and may supply the key to understanding not only what provoked Lebrun into revising the painting's composition but also what contributed to his adopting after its completion a far more cynical approach to his life and career. There is much we don't know about Madeleine, but even the bare outline of her story reveals a dimension to Lebrun that was previously unsuspected and which necessarily forces us to revise our perception of him. Perhaps, now that we know to look for it, the packet of letters or intimate journal I spoke of might come to light and give us a clearer picture of the ebb and flow of Lebrun's and Madeleine's relationship, but for now it's a step forward in itself to discover that this connection existed at all, that Lebrun, like Monet, Cézanne and so many others, had a special woman in his life, a woman who might've become his muse if things had gone differently, and whose name and story we would've learned much sooner if she had. It's been my pleasure this afternoon to remedy that oversight, and share with you some portion of Madeleine Lebrun's unconventional journey from model, to mistress, to wife. Thank you."
There was a beat of silence, succeeded by a warm burst of applause. Bonnie, between relief and elation, broke into a grin, and, looking to share the moment with her grandfather, found him applauding with the rest, his eyes bright with pride but also, disturbingly, with tears. Bonnie knew a stab of concern, but Booth gave her a reassuring smile, and in the time it took Bear to step back to the front and open the floor to discussion, he regained his composure.
It wasn't, consequently, until some time later as they were riding home in the SteerE that Bonnie had the chance to ask her grandfather about his tearing-up. "Did I say something to upset you?"
Booth gave his head a decided shake. "Not at all. It was just… seeing you up at the podium, carrying yourself with such authority, holding the audience spellbound, it took me right back to the first time I saw Grammy." He flashed her a wry smile. "I've probably told you the story."
"Only a time or two. As I remember, someone recommended her to you as a possible consultant, so you dropped in on one of her lectures to scope her out. You didn't expect to be impressed but she blew you away."
"I didn't even make it to a seat, just stood in the aisle watching her with my mouth hanging open." He shook his head again, reminiscently this time, and then, a teasing light coming into his eye, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if you make a conquest or two of your own next week in Paris. Keep a sharp eye out for some slack-jawed man in the audience!"
There was only one lovestruck face Bonnie had any interest in seeing, in Paris or elsewhere, but she didn't say so.