Fernande Olivier, chronicler of modern art
About the first exhibition centred on Fernande Olivier, a central figure of the Montmartre avant-garde, at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris until 19 February.
No, Fernande Olivier (1881-1966) was not just "the missing piece of a puzzle, that of Picasso's life, of which we have already surveyed all the horizons", as Valérie Bougault writes to conclude her article published this month in the magazine Connaissance des arts. Of course, the exhibition devoted to the artist at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris, from 14 October to 19 February, is entitled "Fernande Olivier and Pablo Picasso in the intimacy of the Bateau-Lavoir". It is therefore necessarily centred on the rather short period during which Fernande Olivier shared Picasso's life, from 1905 to 1912. But it is not because on the pretext of the 50th anniversary of his death, the Spanish painter with his abusive behaviour towards women who had the misfortune to fall in love with him will still have all the honours in 2023, that they should always be eclipsed, or at best slipped into the "puzzle" of the "great man"! The fact that this is the first exhibition devoted to Fernande Olivier, an illustrious figure of the Montmartre avant-garde, is absurd enough for us to finally focus on her work.
Fernande Olivier was not only a "model and muse" for Picasso, who "loved her madly", i.e. who locked her in his studio when he was away, and who forbade her to pose for other artists, thus preventing her from practising her profession and earning a living. Nor was she only the little girl who was first abused in her childhood and then in her married life, raped and then regularly beaten by her rapist, whom she was forced to marry at the age of 18 to legitimise the birth of a mysterious child. She is also the young Amélie Lang who dared to run away at 19, change her name and leave everything behind. As she will do at the age of 30 to escape radically from Picasso's toxic grip. Even if it meant ending her life in destitution.
Fernande Olivier is a professional model. She is a writer. She is a painter.
Just after fleeing her first marital home, the young woman began to pose, somewhat by chance it seems, for academic artists such as Fernand Cormon, Jean-Jacques Henner, Carolus-Duran or François-Léon Sicard. It was only a short step from there to meeting a representative of the artistic bohemia of Montmartre, which she took with the young sculptor Laurent Debienne. One day he installed her in the Bateau-Lavoir. The year was 1901. "On summer evenings, all the artists who lived in this strange dry wooden vessel sat on the threshold in front of the large gate... La Butte... the atmosphere was special, as if nourished by the thoughts of the artists," wrote Fernande Olivier in her memoirs. There she met Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire, Braque, Max Jacob, the Douanier Rousseau, Suzanne Valadon... and inevitably ended up meeting Picasso.
She would therefore no longer pose for Joaquim Sunyer, her last lover before she became a couple with Picasso in 1905, nor for Ricard Canals, who so beautifully portrayed her in a white mantilla with her friend Benedetta Canals in Une Loge à la tauromachie. She will have just enough time to illuminate the sumptuous oil on canvas that Kees Van Dongen painted in 1907. The Minotaur quickly wants her all to himself. For in addition to having inspiring plasticity, "the beautiful Fernande" is intelligent. "Fernande, although unloved, received a complete petit-bourgeois education, excelling in literary subjects up to the school certificate," emphasises the journalist from Connaissance des Arts. "Moreover, Gertrude Stein, Picasso's friend and collector, said of her that she "had been brought up to be a schoolmistress", writes Valérie Bougault a little further on.
Her family was ecstatic about the paintings by William Bouguereau (1825-1905) hanging on the walls of the Louvre. Fernande Olivier is delighted by the paintings and sculptures of living artists exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg, the first museum of contemporary art in France. The Impressionists amaze her. "What a sudden emotion in front of the Renoirs, especially those of the first period, in front of certain Degas (...) Manet - my dear Manet! And Cézanne, perhaps even dearer!" she also wrote in her intimate recollections, which were published post-mortem in 1988, as we shall see later.
Fernande Olivier writes, writes... Her humour and erudition are marvellous in describing the life of this famous artistic circle of the Bateau-Lavoir. Jacob, Apollinaire, Derain, Braque, Rousseau, Matisse, but also art dealers such as Vollard or Kahnweiler: far from being satisfied with posing for hours on end, the model is nothing but observation and attentive listening. Without ever stopping herself from judging the works of art for sale, including those for which she posed. Nor from reporting, from her point of view, their critical reception. She has a sharp eye. It is therefore pleasing to read her observations alongside the "official" history of art, the one most often taught through the prism of the great male artists. "I became curious, I analysed, eager for beauty, enthusiastic, I dreamed a little less and I started to draw and soon I will paint, I want to. Fernande Olivier's words are the skeleton of the Montmartre Museum's exhibition, and that is what makes it a success despite the shadow of the "great painter" hanging over it.
A few too rare paintings and drawings by Fernande Olivier, such as Les Trois Vierges and Fruits d'automne, paintings she did around 1935, open the exhibition. Of course, one can only regret that she could not earn a living with her paintings for sale. But this is what finally pushed her to publish her writings. She was in desperate need of money, and only received it from Picasso in the 1950s when he heard of her plan to publish her memoirs. These were not published until 1988. This did not prevent Fernande Olivier from being noticed during her lifetime as a woman of letters by the writer Paul Léautaud and the Société des Gens de lettres, who encouraged her in 1933 to publish Picasso et ses amis. "A striking testimony to the arduous and colourful world of rapins and models, as well as to the unenviable condition of women at the beginning of the 20th century," notes Valérie Bougault.
This book is the culmination of all the articles that this great witness of an era that saw the birth of legends has written on Picasso, Cubism and the great adventure of modern art. This microcosm that she was close to and whose reality she was able to render so well with her pen. A book to devour between two visits to Parisian museums and art galleries: the passages on Juan Gris are particularly tasty.
Illustration: © Succession Picasso 2022