The life of an artist : an autobiography

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HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY

Introduction

With charming frankness and simplicity Jules Breton relates in this volume his memories of boyhood, the aspirations and struggles of youth, and the associations of those later years when Delacroix, Millet, Corot, Rousseau, Daubigny, and others of that memorable company still lived to the glory of the national art which Breton himself represents so worthily. Of his own great successes he speaks with becoming modesty, but we in America have learned long since to value Breton's best work wholly apart from the unthinking admiration aroused for the artist whose " Evening at Finistere " brought a price at the Seney sale in New York which was deemed phenomenal until, at the Morgan sale in 1886, his painting of " The First Communion" reached the astonishing price of $45,500. But neither the contention of millionaires for Breton's paintings nor their presence in most of our larger collections nor the exact rank of his art need concern the reader of this delightfully intimate autobiography, written not from the standpoint of the technician or craftsman, but from that of a man whose quick perceptions, fine sensibility, and command of literary as well as pictorial expression impart a rare value to his story of a life which has touched or included so many of the significant

2 INTRODUCTION.

political, artistic, and literary movements of this century in France. It is always, however, as the man or the artist that Breton writes his recollections, and we can see that politics and social problems have rarely disturbed a life singularly serene and devoted to one purpose. The picture which he presents is a personal one, and in harmony with the dedication of the original to "my daughter Virginie, for whom alone the first chapters were written originally." A few Americans know Breton's poems, but in this autobiography we may justly claim the pleasure of presenting the famous painter to our public as an author whose hope that Americans will find something of interest in this story of his life will not, we think, be disappointed.

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

The Garden of Delight, the cradle of Adam, we have all dwelt in it.

Those sudden bursts of joy whose source is unknown to us, mysterious smiles that without cause gladden our hearts, are but dim reminiscences of it. Thus does the eye preserve the image of the sun long after it has ceased to look at it.

We all treasure in our memories the splendors of a wondrous time, when the light was clearer, the dawn rosier, the air more vibrant, the skies deeper and more softly blue, than they are now.

Who does not remember this earliest spring-time, when the tender buds mingled their wild fragrance with the aroma of the earth ; when we felt the soft clay of the garden-paths, still moist from the winter snows and only partially hardened by the sun, yield under our tread ?

In those days joyous bushes bloomed with starlike flowers, rosy and white, and, forever in motion, buzzed with clouds of golden bees.

Where now are those trees that lived and sang? And how many animals were there that we no longer meet with in the gardens ? One of these was that little elephant, smaller than a mouse, that pushed its slender trunk through the crevices in the wall, watching me from the shadows with malignant glance, and quickly disappearing at my approach. Birds of a pale-green color, like that of our grasshoppers, sang among the corn.

I heard sounds around me as of the voice of one talking alone, and I was not afraid. It was the voice of God.

And the setting sun ! How large it seemed on warm, stormy evenings ; how gloriously it shone among the golden clouds that took new and strange forms at every moment ! I saw among them the figures of animals, of men, and sometimes of the Virgin. But my mother never appeared to me, and my eye sought for her in vain in those celestial processions ; I missed her, for I had known her only for a short time on earth, and I knew she was there above.

The elderly cousin who came in the summer to cut the grass on our lawn — she had seen her ! This woman and I understood each other, she was so old and I so little. She knew so many things ; she sang such beautiful songs in her drawling voice !

One very stormy day she had felt herself raised suddenly in the air and carried bodily to a distance, together with her bundle of grass ; and she had seen the lightning pass close by her under the form of a fiery cock, with swords instead of feathers in its tail.

I loved her dearly. She seemed venerable to me, especially when her figure grew indistinct in the twilight as she returned home in the evening.

I loved her on this account, and also on account of her sickle, which looked so like the crescent moon.

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

II

That my mother was in heaven I had no doubt, but I never knew just how she had left us.

I preserved a recollection of her at once vague and intense, which at occasional delightful hours was always present with me, revived by certain colors, odors, sounds, or states of the atmosphere.

Then I saw again her languid beauty, her sweet pale face, her mouth, expressing mingled melancholy and goodness, and her deep-set brown eyes, circled with dark shadows, that shone with so tender a light under their large white lids !

I fancied I could feel again her passionate embraces. Ah, I loved her well !

She had been ill a long, long time. I recalled her sitting in the corner of the wide chimney-place of our little kitchen, at times with her breast uncovered, to which horrible black reptiles clung, and there it was that she one day said to me, " I am going to die ! " Did I understand her ? Why did I weep ? I recalled those words and others, very commonplace ones. When the period arrived at which I was to put off skirts and wear for the first time the dress of a boy, she saw through the window the tailor coming toward the house, and said to me, " Jules, here is your suit ! "

Since I have grown up I have often shed tender tears thinking of my mother and repeating to myself those welcome words, " Jules, here is your suit ! "

My mother ! Again I see the straw hat trimmed with wild flowers, and the red and yellow shawl you wore in your languid walks in the garden, where you were soon to bid farewell to the flowers you loved, and that beheld you die !

I must have been bad indeed to have vexed you at such a time.

I had received that morning, from my godfather, my first sword. I fancied myself a rural guard ! And I went to the end of the village in search of some delinquent. I arrived very opportunely. A boy of about my own age was crossing the nearest cultivated field. I called to him to leave it, and, as he refused to do so, I made use of my weapon. The blow struck him full in the face, and the poor little fellow's nose began to bleed. At the sight of the blood I began to realize the wickedness of my conduct. I returned home ashamed of it. From the garden, where I had taken refuge, I soon heard angry cries filling the court-yard. On my account the mother of the injured child was abusing my poor mother.

Mamma called to me, and, as I did not answer, she hurried in search of me. Then, seeing myself on the point of being discovered, I slipped for safety into an asparagus-bed which had not yet been cut, and which was impenetrable to every one but me, and there awaited the cessation of the storm.

Soon the young invalid walked no longer in the garden. She kept her room, then her bed, and every evening before going to sleep my brother and I went up-stairs to kiss her.

After kissing us tenderly she gave us bonbons. And one day, when the bonbons were all exhausted, mamma went to Arras to buy some more. I did not understand then why she remained there. I did not understand, either, why she took us, before setting out, to the house of a relation who lived at a distance from us in the village, and why we spent the whole day there and received more caresses than usual. But on our return home I suspected that something strange had happened, for going into the empty room, I found Mile. Rosalie there crying. She could cry then, this Mile. Rosalie, who was so terrible when she punished the children with her long switch at the infants' school which we attended, and of which she was the mistress.

III

But let us leave Mile. Rosalie.

I should like to go still further back into the past, to those first sensations which stand out faintly from the confused mist in which my memory, becoming fainter and fainter, finally loses itself — the dawn of the beginning, the light which dimly illuminates nothingness. There I see vague white shapes move about, and faces bend over me, of which all the features are indistinct, except the eyes that shine like stars, there I see smiles and eddying whirlpools.

When I begin to discern more clearly the forms of things, building was going on at our house. They were adding a new wing to the old part of the structure. Immense walls rose into the air, and on ladders which seemed to reach into infinity men were perpetually going up and down.

They had dug a hole for a pump, and the water they drew out of it at first was quite white. I thought it was milk — milk from the earth ! I wanted to drink some of it.

On account of my mother's delicate health, I had been brought up by a nurse. Her name was Henriette. I called her MhnZre. She was a young widow, a brunette, very active in her movements, and she loved me as she did her own children — an attachment which I reciprocated to the end.

Poor, and extremely neat, she lived in a room in a cottage in the neighborhood, which she divided by means of a curtain of cheap material, ornamented with blue flowers on a white ground. A single window, opening on to the street, lighted up an oaken wardrobe, kept scrupulously clean, surmounted by an dtagere on which were a few pewter vessels, always bright, and some rustic earthenware. A high fireplace with whitewashed, rough-cast walls, a black hearth covered with sticky soot, and a few straw chairs complete the picture.

When the curtain was raised a double alcove, so dark that one could scarcely distinguish the two beds in it, was revealed to view by the light of a small window set in the wall. There it was that Memere often put me to sleep to the droning sound of some village lament.

When I was able to walk, I still went quite naturally to the house of Memere to play with her two boys, both of them a little older than I. I preferred their coarse food to ours, and I always arrived at meal-times. Henriette would bring to the threshold of the open door the large black pot filled with steaming potatoes, their skins bursting open, and, seated on the floor around it, our hands for forks, we all would eat heartily.

One day, coming in hastily, I struck my foot against some obstacle which lay in the way, and fell with all my force against the edge of the pot, cutting myself severely under the lower lip. Henriette ran to me on hearing my cries and, frightened at the sight of the blood gushing forth, clasped me in her arms and carried me quickly to her little garden that opened out on the fields.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in spring.

The pain grew less ; I restrained my tears and stammered : " Memere, don't cry ; 'tis nothing ! " Suddenly I pointed with my finger to a large yellow mass at the end of the garden, so bright, so extraordinarily bright,

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST. g

that only to think of it dazzles me with an excess of splendor.

Henriette understood what my outbursts of delight and my extended arms meant, and carried me toward this marvel, which was nothing more than a field of colza in bloom. I have never seen another like it, but every other colza -field delights me because of that one.

My nurse plucked me a branch, and since then colzaflowers always smell sweet to me.

It was at about this time that I first knew what fear was.

Meniere brought me home one evening from a house at some distance from ours, where night had overtaken us. The streets were dark, the outlines of the roofs blended imperceptibly into the blackness of the sky, and everything appeared still darker from the lines of light that escaped through the cracks of the closed shutters, fiery arrows that all pointed in the darkness toward my eyes with a persistency that had something like sorcery in it. I buried my head in Henriette's bosom, and remained perfectly still. I had already been told of the horrors of hell, and the thought of them redoubled my terror. Suddenly at the turn of a street an extraordinary noise burst forth, and at the same time I heard a crowd of people, passing and repassing, close beside me. We were in the midst of the tumult — the harsh sound of rattles, the cracking of whips, the clashing of iron pots and pans. Frozen with terror I clung closer and closer to Henriette. I closed my eyes convulsively, shutting the lids tight, and yet I saw — I saw a legion of black devils, who pursued me, brandishing long bars of red-hot iron, and uttering ferocious chuckles and abominable cries.

When we reached the house I heard my nurse say, "They are blowing the horns for Zagu6e."

IO THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

To blow the horns for any one means, with us peasants, to give him a charivari.

They were blowing the horns then, for Zaguee, an old beggar-woman, who, with her owl's head and red eyes, looked more like a sorceress than an ordinary human being.

IV

I have since seen many magnificent gardens, but never one that could make me forget the garden of my father — for me the first and only garden.

Surrounded by walls covered with espaliers, and crowned by vines with a verdant frieze, it was divided into squares by wide sanded walks, into which paths, bordered with sorrel, opened. At the various points where the paths met, pear-trees spread out their branches in the form of an arch.

A true French garden, with its beds of vegetables and its flower-borders.

At the entrance, between two grass-plots, a low marble pillar, surmounted by a sun-dial, rose from the midst of a clump of anemones.

But the wonder of the garden was the grotesque stone figures at its four corners, that gleamed in the sunshine, perched on high wooden columns painted green.

They represented the four seasons.

Spring, Summer, and Autumn, chubby-cheeked and plump, bore, one of them her basket of flowers, another her sheaf, and the third her vine-branch, laden with black grapes.

As for Winter, I do not know why it bore no resemblance to the other seasons. It was represented by the

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST. n

naked figure of a woman, of larger proportions than theirs, the head and shoulders only being covered with a kind of sackcloth.

Huddled up and crouching with the cold, this figure seemed to shiver, in spite of the brands that burned at its feet.

This want of harmony in the statues puzzled me. Doubtless this figure replaced a former Winter, broken by some accident, for it was newer than the others, and its outlines, more delicate than theirs, had not yet quite disappeared under the numerous coats of paint which, for a long time past, had renovated the figures each successive year.

Such was this garden, for me the garden of Eden !

Here, among the flowers and the insects, my first sensations, my first reveries, had birth.

Often, in the silent solitude, I would lie stretched on my back on the grass in the sunshine. Close to my face were the long blades of grass, seeming tall as trees, and I would let my fancy wander far away with the clouds floating past, while above me the branches of an immense poplar, which grew in our neighbor's garden, reached, quivering against the blue sky, into space.

At every breath of wind, every branch set in motion its flakes of cottony seeds that, becoming detached, fell softly at my feet ; and, through the shadowy depths of the tree, occasional glimpses of the sky gleamed like blue stars. And the swallows darted past, flew round and round, hovered above me and then soared high into the air, diminishing in size, until they seemed no larger than the insects on the dandelions beside me.

Clumps of various flowers surrounded the grass-plot. Among the bees and insects that gleamed golden, purple, and emerald as they flew, the day-moth would suddenly appear like a flash of lightning, and, without pausing in its flight, would dart from flower to flower, hovering an instant above each with almost invisible wings, and plunging into its cup the slender proboscis that, lengthening itself out, wound round and round like a hunter's horn. And what delicate music accompanied these pure visions !

Buzzings, rustlings, murmurs, the sound of insects brushing against the rose-leaves, and of birds sharpening their bills.

Where find again the ineffable delights of these twilight hours when the red flowers were already black, while the blue ones still shone brightly !

The beetles whizzed blindly against my face, the night butterflies described indistinctly in the gathering darkness the abrupt zigzags of their flight, and from behind the trees the moon cast pale, trembling shadows on the walls. I experienced a certain pleasure in penetrating into the darkest places among the foliage, and feeling mysterious shudders run down my back at seeing some strange nocturnal animal, shrew-mouse or salamander, moving on the ground.

The profound silence was broken only by the movement of some bird concealed among the branches, and which I had awakened ; or by the strange sound borne on the breeze from the distant marsh — the harsh croaking of the innumerable frogs making there their accustomed tumult, and by the shrill and ceaseless chirping of countless grasshoppers. On one of those evenings when I had been allowed to remain out later than usual, the idea occurred to me to shake a rose-bush at the end of one of the walks, for the purpose of bringing down some cockchafers, I think it was. But what fell out of the bush began to hop about in the flower-border. Cockchafers do not hop, frogs do not climb rose-bushes. Here there was some mystery which made me tremble at once with joy and terror. Yes, little living things were jumping and hopping about among the flowers.

I trembled, but I had the courage to put my hand on one of these strange little beings. O joy ! I felt feathers ! The rose-bush sheltered a bird's nest !

When I look far back into the mystery of the past, I find among the flowers of the garden a little girl, fair and rosy, with blue eyes. This was my sister Julie, who had come into the world two years before me, and who was so soon to leave it.

Important events make but slight impression on children, and I have no recollection of her death, which, they say, caused the death of my mother, who was inconsolable for her loss. But I remember that one day she was swinging from a ladder, her feet brushing the ground, and her charming head, from which the hair fell in a shower of golden curls, thrown back, while she sang in her sweet childish voice a couplet which I have never since heard, and of which the two following lines have remained in my memory :

I find, too, among the family relics, a curl of her hair, which seems still to keep a gleam of its former

brightness.

Every year, as soon as the fine weather set in, the painter Fremy came, and his arrival was a great event.

I can see him now with his important air, his crooked nose, and his jacket of maroon-colored cloth, unpacking his painting implements and his color-pots.

The first time I saw this man, I said to myself, " I will be a painter ! "

He would glance at me severely whenever I touched his pencils or his book of gold-leaf.

He was very grave, and scarcely ever spoke. When he felt in the humor, however, he would talk to me about the various chateaux where he had worked.

He told me wonderful things about them, but I could not then imagine anything finer than the paternal house, especially after this same Fremy had repainted the wide plastered facade, with its pediment ornamented with a lyre of a bright rose-color, the large door yellow, and the shutters a cheerful green.

This most important part of the work being finished, the painter would descend to details, and now indeed my joy burst forth. I watched him as he took out the little pots that contained fine and brilliant colors, from his tin box. The first thing to be done was to retouch a painting of the setting sun on the ceiling above the staircase, and to renovate the marchande d' amour above the mirror on the parlor mantel-piece. Then the turn of the Chinese would come.

The court-yard of the house was in the form of a square, and was partly paved, partly sodded. It was inclosed on three sides by the main portion of the building, and two side wings, composed of the dining-room, the kitchens, the bake-house, and various sheds. This yard was separated from the back yard and the garden by a railing.

Overlooking the back yard was a square pigeon-house, resting on four pillars and terminating in a chefdozuvre of architecture.

This pointed roof consisted, in the first place, of a sort of small, round wooden temple, supported on an iron shaft, and surrounded by little columns, the bases

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

of which, set in a circular flooring, remained in air. As the crowning glory of this diminutive temple of the sibyl, there hung over it a sort of extinguisher, ornamented with bells and terminating in a ball, through which passed the iron shaft on which turned an enormous weathercock — the famous Chinese, who sat in the midst of the landscape smoking his pipe. You may imagine the effect ! All this took up fully a third of the pigeon-house, and did not frighten the pigeons. I remember that some years later, on a certain stormy night, we heard an ominous sound, and in the morning the temple was found lying broken to pieces on the ground, and the Chinese, all disjointed, beside it. But we must not anticipate events.

Fremy, assisted by a workman, set up his ladder and unfastened and took down the Chinese, who, with every step which Fremy took, seemed to grow larger, and soon I was able to look at him close by, and to measure the thickness of the flooring of the temple, which was strengthened by iron plates fastened with large nails.

But if I clapped my hands with delight when the painter brightened the jacket of the figure with a splendid chrome-yellow, what was my joy when I saw him, for the purpose of repainting its trousers, mixing blue with the yellow to obtain a most beautiful bright green !

After this, the " Four Seasons " were ranged around the shed, leaving their vacant pedestals and the deserted garden behind them.

And, indeed, they stood in great need of the painter's help, for they were covered all over with spots where the old paint had blistered and fallen off in scales. High up on their pedestals this was scarcely noticeable, but close by it was hideous. Fremy scraped them carefully, gave them a first coat of white paint, and then, like a veritable magician, restored to them the appearance of youth and life, touching their lips and chubby cheeks with carmine, and their fixed and squinting eyes with brown, while thousands of little insects settled giddily on the fresh paint, to remain fastened there by their wings till the following spring.

VI

I made the acquaintance of my uncle Boniface, whom at that time I called my Lille uncle, about 1830. My mother had not yet begun to keep her room, and still attended to the details of housekeeping.

No one around us suspected the influence my uncle was fated to have on our destinies. But one might fancy I had a presentiment of it, for, although I was then only three years old, I remember the minutest details preceding and accompanying his arrival.

The sun was shining. I was gay as a lark. I had promised to be very good ; and I was the more disposed to be so, as I expected some handsome present from a man coming from a large city, and who must be of some importance, judging from the assiduous preparations I observed going on.

Ever since morning the house had worn an air of festivity and joyous anticipation, in which the masters, the servants, and even inanimate objects shared — the fresh flowers on the chimney-piece, the table glittering with its shining silver, and the antique bottles covered with a bluish cloud, iridescent with time, and of which the corks were beginning to crumble into dust. I remember with what respect and with how careful a touch my father set these bottles always in the same place on the console fastened to the parlor wall.

V

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

My mother walked to and fro, and my father stood with his eyes fixed on the newspaper, reading it halfaloud in an indistinct voice.

Taking up a sheet of paper I tried to imitate this odd way of reading, making my parents, who saw in this a mark of a precocious intelligence, laugh, when (my dear uncle, you were no ordinary man, since I can recall and recount with pleasure details so insignificant regarding you) — when the rolling of carriage -wheels was heard, first in the street, and then entering the court-yard.

We hurried out, uttering joyful cries of welcome, and for the first time I felt myself raised in the arms of the generous man to whom I owe everything. I shall speak at length of him later on. All that I could observe on this day was, that my uncle was a man of elegant bearing, that he wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, in the French fashion, light-colored trousers, and a wide white cravat ; that he held his head erect, and that his high and wide forehead was surmounted by a superb toupet, trimmed in the form of an arch, which must have been the object of special care.

I was not disappointed in my expectations from him : he brought me a bright hunting-horn. I loved him at once.

VII

Besides the persons already mentioned, there were in the house my maternal grandmother, Scholastique Fumery, who had long been a widow, my grandfather, Dr. Platel, having died many years before ; Joseph Carpentier, an old soldier of the empire, and his wife, Phillipine. If we add to these the persons hired by the day jS THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST.

— the gardener, Buisine, nicknamed Frise, often accompanied by his son; the bueresses (laundresses) ; the carpenter who split the firewood, a work that occupied a long time ; a joiner, who for months and months hammered, planed, and smoked innumerable pipes in the unfinished parlor of the new building ; and our little companions dressed up by their sisters, who came to play with us— it will be seen that there was no lack of animation in our house.

My father, the steward of the Duke de Duras, for whom he superintended important estates, among others the forest of Labroye, was compelled to be often absent from home.

Besides this, the functions he exercised as assistant of the justice of the peace often detained him at Carvin, and compelled him to take a part in many of the affairs of the canton. Thus it was that he was seldom at home, and when there he was always busy, scarcely ever leaving his desk, which was always covered with maps and books.

Before his marriage he had been a lawyer's clerk in the office of my uncle Platel, at Herim-Lietard.

He had been a member of the municipal band of that city, which explains the lyre on the facade of our house.

I have seen his abandoned buccina, which for a long time was thrown from one corner to another, and which was finally hung up in the dark passage behind the staircase. This snake, with its crocodile's head, its large, wide-open mouth, and its red eyes, often set me to thinking. Its head and neck still preserved, in the midst of the verdigris that overlaid them, a few scales of lacquer and gold.