Chapter 10 1865 - France
CLAUDE MONET
“Excusez-moi. Pardon,” he shouted as he stepped past a man in an elegant suit and top hat. The woman holding the man’s arm wore a ball gown that covered two meters in diameter. No wonder it felt so crowded in the room.
The Emperor would arrive at any time and Monet wanted to see how they had arranged his two paintings.
“Damn, Bazille,” he muttered under his breath.
It took him forever to dress. Only Bazille and Manet could afford suits, but Monet understood Frédéric’s fussiness—everyone at the Salon would be dressed to the nines.
Monet thought he would be mistaken for a stagehand, even though he’d dressed his best; in gray woolen trousers, white shirt with navy silk scarf tie, and dark gray thigh-length sack coat.
His bohemian lifestyle afforded him no more than that.
But, he grinned, out of all the wealthy and elegant guests in the room, it was his two paintings that hung on the wall.
Monet’s heart pumped with pride as his eyes searched for his artwork.
Paintings of all shapes and sizes hung four to five high, filling every inch of the walls, practically up to the vaulted ceilings.
“Excusez-moi. Pardon,” he said again, bumping into a gentleman with a cane topped with a gold eagle.
“Boy, watch yourself,” the man scolded, then turned and laughed. “I understand, Monet. You’re in a hurry to see your first acceptance to the Salon.”
“Monsieur Courbet, please forgive me,” Monet said and tipped his wool cap to the elder master artist.
“Eugène must be very proud of you…as we all are,” he added. “Going from caricature drawings to acceptance in the great Salon in a few short years is quite the accomplishment, young man.”
“If I have become a painter, it is entirely due to Eugène Boudin,” Claude said, thinking fondly of the morning that Eugène first challenged him to meet together at sunrise on the beach of Le Havre and paint en-plein-air.
“The only way to capture the light, color, and emotion of the moment,” Eugène had said about bringing one’s easel directly to the subject.
“I owe everything to Eugene, and I am grateful to him for my success,” Monet said to Courbet leaning in so he could hear over the music.
“You will find Eugène two rooms over. The committee needed a larger room for all his paintings,” Courbet said into Monet’s ear, then winked.
“Monsieur Courbet, do you have entries into this year’s Salon?”
“Well, of course…I have a few.”
Monet looked past Courbet and realized that his great work filled the entire wall they stood next too.
What an understatement! Heat rose up Monet’s neck in embarrassment.
Hanging in the center of the room filled with Courbet’s artwork hung a monumental canvas of at least three meters by seven or eight meters.
Monet would have had to sell body parts to even think of buying such a large piece of canvas.
“Have you seen that renegade’s painting of the naughty woman?
” Courbet used his cane to point to the corner where people crowded around his friend, Manet.
“The scoundrel has caused quite the stir…I think it’s wonderful!
” he winked again. Courbet bent even closer to Monet.
“I have a painting I was too afraid to submit for this year. I have titled it Origin of the World. You think Manet is in trouble, wait until next year!” He laughed.
Monet laughed with him, while impatiently scanning the surrounding walls.
“There you are, young Monet,” Courbet again pointed with his cane toward the end of his collection. “I am honored to share this wall,” the master tipped his top hat.
Claude finally saw his two paintings and fought back tears.
Courbet encouraged him with the top of his cane to get a closer look. “Yes, yes. Go, son and enjoy this moment and perhaps next year you can buy yourself real clothes.”
Monet heard Courbet cackle over the music as he willed his feet to move toward his work.
The curator had hung his two paintings in the corner and high on the wall, stacked one on top of the other.
Each painting measured nearly the same size at one meter by one and a half meters.
Le Pave de Chailly hung above La Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide.
Of course, no one stood and admired his work.
No group gathered to argue over the mastery of it, but the paintings were his, and they represented his sacrifices—leaving his comfortable family home in La Havre, surviving his mother’s death when he was sixteen, turning down the offer to take over his father’s profitable ship-chandler and grocery business, enduring his father’s disapproval for his life choices, stomaching the poverty and the many nights he went to bed hungry and chilled, enduring the rain and the heat or the cold, and sitting in the elements for hours and hours from sunrise to dark, when his eyes were heavy and his arm exhausted.
At this moment, it was all worth it. He had become an artist. No one could take that away from him now.
The military band in the main foyer had played loudly, but as they struck up the old French marching song, The Chanson de l'Oignon, the sound and activity exploded. The Emperor had entered the building.
Monet gave one more satisfied glance at his paintings and stepped his way into the massive space with people on all sides of him, pushing him forward.
Because of his attire, he resisted the advance, but that became futile.
He quickly found himself against the roped off area for the Emperor and his entourage.
With great fanfare, Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie de Montijo appeared through the main entry.
Instead of the military uniform that Monet normally saw him wearing in newspaper photographs, the Emperor wore an elegant formal suit—a black, double-breasted frock coat, charcoal grey formal trousers, a checkered vest, a silk navy cravat tied at the neck, and a quite tall, shiny black top hat.
Claude always thought that newspapers had exaggerated the ruler’s facial hair for effect, but if anything, they had underestimated the furry creature that existed on the Napoleon’s upper lip and chin.
The large walrus mustache covered his lips but waxed into fine points that extended three inches out on either side.
A four-inch chin puff tumbled from his mouth and ended in scraggly gray ends.
The newspaper had also not exaggerated the Emperor’s poor health. Napoleon walked with a stiff and painful limp, and his face appeared drawn and pale. The Empress held tight to one of Napolean’s arm and he used a cane in the other.
Despite this, the ruler of France managed a smile and a wave with his cane and the people erupted in cheers. Monet joined in the merriment and clapped with the music as they seated the Emperor and Empress in the center of the slightly elevated stage.
A man in a military uniform stepped to the front and faced the crowd, and the band stopped playing. “Mesdames et Messieurs, I present to you, Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Eugénie de Montijo.” Both waved at the thunderous applause.
Napoleon, a popular monarch, had commissioned the grand reconstruction of Paris, including the modernization of the French economy.
The Emperor had inspired and directed the rebuilding of the city with elegant structures like the one they now celebrated in, along with expansive parks and new widened boulevards, lit with gas lamps.
Monet applauded vigorously for the ruler who had become a champion for the visual arts.
It had only been two years ago when the ultra-conservative director of the Salon refused all submissions by avant-garde artists, including his friends, Manet and Pissarro.
His Majesty had forced the acceptance of such work last year and may have contributed indirectly to Monet’s success this year.
The Emperor raised his hands to quiet the crowd, and the announcer continued. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the great pleasure of welcoming the delegation from the far away and mysterious land of Le Japon.”
Claude leaned over the rope and looked to the right to see a group of approximately twenty menacing-looking men marching forward toward the stage.
Monet had never seen such a curious sight: the sandal-like shoes, the flowing pants, and the handsome silken and colorful tops.
The men’s serious oval faces and unemotional eyes focused straight ahead.
The tops of their heads were shaved bald, and at the sides and backs, they pulled their jet-black hair into tight knots.
Military swords, held tightly in place by a sash, crisscrossed at their waists.
They stepped in perfect unison, forming two straight lines in front of the stage. Their apparent leader barked a command, and in flawless harmony they bowed at the waist to the Emperor, then stood up straight with focused attention.
Then they separated quickly without a command, forming an aisle leading to the front of the Emperor and Empress.
Two young women dressed in stunning red silken robes glided their way up the aisle formed by the strange group of men.
One carried a small, rolled bamboo mat and the other a medium-sized box.
Once in front of the Emperor and Empress, they knelt and bowed their foreheads to the granite.
The room went silent. Monet tried capturing this magnificent red in his imagination.
With a sharp command by their leader, they sat up on their heels with perfectly straight backs.
One of them unrolled the mat, and the other opened the box.
They placed various items on the top of the mat.
Then, rising effortlessly from kneeling, the two girls retreated in small steps to the end of the line of the men.
The crowd murmured in awe and wonderment at this strange sight and grew impatient with the stillness of the Japanese delegation. Is something else supposed to happen?
Then it did.
A ripple of gasps swelled through the crowd. Like a heavenly veil parting, a vision stepped forward. Monet wondered if the gasps came from the women or the men or both.
Then he saw her.
Her beauty snatched the breath from his lips. In all the flower gardens, in all the magnificent forests, and all the sunrises and sunsets, he had witnessed he’d never seen so stunning a vision.
Mesmerized by this woman in a delicate yellow silk robe, embroidered with elegant red flowers, Monet thought his heart had forgotten to beat.
A wide red sash tightly bound her chest. She advanced with tiny steps almost floating over the floor, her two-inch high wooden sandals barely yielding a sound against the granite.
Alabaster combs held the mass of jet-black hair gathered on top of her head.
Lacy flowers garnished the hairdo that flowed down one side of her face that had been painted radiant white, highlighting her dark eyebrows and brilliant red lips.
Claude wasn’t a religious man but knew at this moment an angel had appeared.
When the woman floated in his direction, he gasped.
Not sure if he imagined it, he perceived the scent of the most delicate rose.
As she passed, he went weak in the knees, observing the plunging neckline of the silken robe at the nape of her neck.
The brilliant white of her face continued down her upper back, highlighted with a design that pointed to the most sensual part of her neck, offering elegant lines and grace.
“Mon Dieu, my God!” Monet hoped no one around him had heard the words escape his lips.
With all the beauty, pageantry, and splendor, the serene look on her face struck Monet the most—like a flower peacefully swaying in the sunshine in the cool of the morning—her eyes downcast and focused on the single step ahead.
The woman glided up the aisle formed by the men, stopped in front of the mat the two girls had laid, knelt effortlessly in the tight robe, bowed slowly and purposefully with a perfectly straight back.
Then, with the most graceful of motions, she began moving and using the instruments from the box for making some sort of concoction—each movement seamlessly precise.
How he wished he had his easel. How could one ever capture such beauty, such perfection, such flawlessness?
Yes, this can only be an angel from heaven.