On the Proust side

About the extension and restoration of the Maison de Tante Léonie – Musée Marcel Proust in Illiers-Combray (28), open all year round.

Would a modest watercolour by Suzette Lemaire depicting the Château de Réveillon in the Marne region arouse as much emotion if it did not represent the setting for the love affair between Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn? If traces of it were not found in Les Plaisirs et les Jours, a collection of poems and short stories by Marcel Proust, as well as in Jean Santeuil, his unfinished youthful novel?

That is the charm of the Maison de Tante Léonie – Musée Marcel Proust. Here, we come across the history of art with the search for lost time. We suddenly become interested in artists who were contemporary with Marcel Proust, even if they never caused a stir in the art market. Even if we never met them on the walls of an art gallery. Suzanne, known as Suzette, is the daughter of Madeleine Lemaire, owner of the famous Château de Réveillon, also a painter, who inspired the character of Mme Verdurin in In Search of Lost Time. We owe to Edouard Manet a superb profile portrait of Suzette Lemaire, who maintained a regular correspondence with her friends Marcel and Reynaldo, to the point of convincing them to come and spend two long stays at the château in 1894 and 1895, where they were able to develop their passionate love life at leisure. The writer and the composer had met a few months earlier in the salons of Madeleine Lemaire, in Dieppe, who received Sarah Bernhardt as well as Anatole France, Puvis de Chavannes, Jean Béraud and Edouard Detaille. All of Paris crowded into this Dieppe villa without always apparently taking much pleasure in it. The artists probably hoped to meet art lovers who might be interested in their works of art for sale. Even if the author André Germain, who was invited to Madeleine Lemaire's and who wrote about Marcel Proust, called her a "rose-massacrer" and found her ugly, unsightly and authoritarian... Madeleine Lemaire nevertheless became one of only two female members, with Louise Catherine Breslau, of the Société nationale des beaux-arts, refounded in 1890 by Ernest Meissonnier, with Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou in particular... She even counted Marie Laurencin among her students.

In short, it is a great pleasure to be able to immerse oneself in the artistic life of the end of the century while wandering around "the house of Aunt Léonie", alias Elisabeth Amiot, the real name of Marcel de Proust's aunt, in Illiers-Combray, in Eure-et-Loir. Where, yes, the famous passage of the madeleine takes place! “And suddenly the memory came to me. This taste was that of the little piece of madeleine that on Sunday mornings in Combray, when I went to say hello to her in her room, my aunt Léonie offered me after dipping it in her tea or lime blossom infusion,” writes the narrator of Du côté de chez Swann. As Isabelle Manca-Kunert writes in her article for the summer issue of L’Oeil, “some places give off a scent that is recognizable among all; others suggest an unforgettable flavor. It is impossible to cross the threshold of Aunt Léonie’s house without immediately thinking of the famous delicacy inseparable from this house-museum in Illiers-Combray.” (…) The destiny of this residence, and more broadly of the entire town, is inseparable from the figure of the 1919 Goncourt Prize winner. The cradle of the family for generations, Illiers even – unique in France – merged its name with that of its literary avatar, Combray, to become Illiers-Combray in 1971 on the occasion of the writer’s centenary. » Just that!

As a child, the novelist actually spent his Easter holidays from 1877 to 1880 in this town where time seems to have stood still. And where he probably never imagined that a statue of him would one day stand! As the journalist from L’Oeil points out, “the city has cherished this heritage, especially since it is the only preserved Proust memorial site, because the various apartments he occupied in Paris have disappeared or have been drastically transformed. After the owners disappeared, the house was fortunately little touched, although it was rented out. To preserve the spirit of the site, the descendants quickly understood the need to save the place and to preserve what could still be preserved as it was.” » Descendants supported by the Society of Friends of Marcel Proust, who will therefore recreate the interior decor by drawing inspiration from literary descriptions and by staging authentic family furniture and pieces that resurrect the atmosphere of the time. An essential pilgrimage of course: the bedroom of the hypochondriac and melancholic aunt. On her bedside table, under glass certainly but still, are carefully placed her mass books, her statuette of the Holy Virgin, her medicines, her famous teapot filled with lime leaves… and the famous madeleine.

Everyone has contributed their donations and bequests to make this bourgeois residence not only a house listed as a Historic Monument, labeled “Maison des illustres” and “Maison des écrivains”, but also a “Museum of France”. An unprecedented case for an associative establishment. The Society of Friends of Marcel Proust, which manages the site, therefore continues to actively enrich the museum’s collections. Until an extension became essential, as well as a serious restoration. Both have just been carried out for two and a half years. Thus, in the room where little Marcel slept, a magic lantern was recently installed that projects the story of Geneviève de Brabant, echoing the passage where the narrator says that the family used this device to distract him. The oriental living room of Marcel's uncle, Jules Amiot, passionate about orientalism after having made several trips to North Africa, has also benefited from a spectacular restoration, revealing all the magic of the stained glass in which the rays of the sun play, and whose "small colored squares" so marked the writer. But above all, a collection of works of art allows us to portray Proust's world. On the walls are brought together the paintings painted by the people he loved, knew, or representing the people he loved, knew.

While the new exhibition presents documents, photographs and relics on the ground floor, the new rooms upstairs showcase these emblematic paintings from Proust’s circles. Works by Paul-César Helleu (the original small museum has in fact been expanded with prestigious deposits, such as the one granted by the Musée d’Orsay of the interior of Amiens Cathedral painted by this painter who inspired Proust to create the character of Elstir) or Giovanni Boldini, sit alongside the recent acquisition of the sublime Portrait présumé de Mme Jeanne Samary de la Comédie-Française, painted by Louise Abbéma in 1880, or the moving Portrait de Jeanne Proust, la mère de l’écrivain, painted by Anaïs Beauvais and which was restored in 2020 on loan to the Musée Carnavalet. You will have understood: when you love literature as much as you love painting, like me, you live a suspended moment in Illiers-Combray. I could therefore only invite you to go and follow in Marcel's footsteps...

Article written by Valibri en Roulotte