József Rippl-Rónai
Memoirs
Excerpts

Degas, as he lives in my memory

It is not easy to write on Degas the man; he shared his private life with few and was, anyway, a difficult man to approach, preferring to live in isolation, the sculptor Bartholomé was, so to speak, his only friend. With his help, Toulouse-Lautrec was the only one of our lot to cross the threshold of Degas' studio. What I know of Degas comes from Lautrec's stories, told in his characteristic, direct manner at our regular afternoon gatherings at the offices of the Revue Blanche, where several writers were also there to listen to him, thus Ernest La Jeunesse, Paul Adam, Félix Féneon, the two Natansons and many others, whose names I cannot remember right now. Oh yes!—one of them, to be sure, was that strange man, Alfred Jarry.
Lautrec told us that Degas jealously guards his best pieces, you might say that he alone takes his delight in them. He would not part with them for the world, certainly not to exhibit them. How happy that lucky man will be who now, after his death, will inherit them.
They say that in the late eighties he nearly lost the sight of his eyes. At that time he did not paint but modelled, but what is most intriguing, he fervently turned to photography, but to photography as an art. He posed real Degas pictures but in a painterly version. I have often heard it said that these photographs are marvellous, and since they mirror Degas' mind and soul, they are highly regarded as art. I can understand this love of beautiful, call them spoilt plates, because long before him I had made them myself, or had them made.
The case of Carričre comes to mind, who, as a young man, also almost lost his sight, but not his driving spirit, and so his delicate, fascinating canvases, floating in the mist, could be seen first at the art dealer Thomas, and later, when Thomas told the entire art loving world of Paris how valuable these little nothings were, at the Salon on the Champs de Mars, where they met with great acclaim. Rodin was one of the most enthusiastic admirers of Carričre the artist. The difference between Degas and Carričre is that one was prompted by near-blindness to paint, the other to take photographs. (This suggests that in general the way artists see things varies greatly; they have many eyes.)
We, who were young at the time and decadent (in the best sense of the term) could see the works of this great painter only at Durand-Ruel's in the company of Toulouse-Lautrec, whose circle also included Maurice Denis, Valloton, Bonnard, and others, and later in the Caillebotte collection at the Galérie Luxembourg. At first we hesitated to do so, afraid to be clipped on the ears by someone in authority in front of Manet's Olympia, for instance, but, Renoir, Degas and the others were almost all also considered worse than lepers. To stand in front of any of these, staring at the painting for hours, was asking for trouble. We all remember well the shameless and impudent stipulation that these lepers could only exhibit in a small isolated room in the back, and only if Caillebotte was ready to add his stamp collection which was considered priceless. Preposterous, and my blood still boils when I recall that it was only after giving way to such an infamous demand that these artists—who are today loved by every man of good taste and sound judgement—could be heard or were allowed to breathe. Among them was Degas, the condemned.
I would not say that he was well-disposed towards young, ambitious searching artists of our kind. In fact, he showed little interest and would visit our exhibitions only in secret. And he was not alone in this. Cézanne, too, and Renoir did much the same. They knew scarcely anything about us, albeit we organized group shows at the most distinguished places, including Durand-Ruel's. If we had not helped ourselves, they would never have helped us. We had to stand firm by our convictions if we wanted to reach our goal which, thank the Lord, everyone of us in that small group was able to do. Later all of us, including the sculptor Maillol, made it to dry land. But except for Lautrec, who was more sociable than we were, we could never get near them, especially not into their studios.
Degas' work made the impression on me that he had taken a good look at Daumier, Corot and Constantin Guys. In addition to these, he also spoke with enthusiasm about Ingres, in particular. The ballet dancers as he saw them, proclaim his unique and splendid taste, for ever and ever rendered in a brilliant artistic manner. The draughtsmanship and painting are highly original. The manner in which things are cut out of nature is on the highest level. He is one of the most original artists on the surface of this earth. We owe Degas and all his followers, to the last man, to the Salon des Indépendents.
On the brink of the war, a famous collector held an auction in Paris. Bidding went up to 450,000 francs for a Degas pastel of a ballerina, which he had bought for 500 francs. There is hardly a man who is not familiar with this event, just as is the case with Millet's Angelus. They say that Degas was pleased, he thought it very interesting, and he was supposed to have said that when he sold it, he was glad of the 500 francs.
Let me add that I feel about Degas the way I feel about everyone I love, that I love him, warts and all. I always felt—and this is something I was bold enough to tell my friends in Paris—that one of his gravest mistakes was letting Durand-Ruel frame his beautiful pastels; I did not like it that they used dilettante passpartouts instead of looking for just the right frame.

Munkácsy the man

As a young man I, too, ended up in Paris, like so many other young artists. I walked the streets of this magnificent city unknown, without a penny to my name—the city where so many strange and fascinating lives cross paths. I watched the glitter of this city of lights, the hustle and bustle of this metropolis of a thousand faces. I felt very much a stranger, and very poor. I knew that an outstanding compatriot, Mihály Munkácsy was living in this city, in prosperity and celebrity. I decided time and again that I would look him up, but one thing or another always held me back. I heard it said that he was a strange man. He was in the habit of turning away even the famous and the great. How then would he not turn away me, someone unknown?
Then I decided to look him up after all. I hired a cab by the hour, packed everything I had done in Munich into it, and had myself driven to the Avenue de Villiers, where Munkácsy lived. A footman took my card at the gate downstairs, I explained to him that I had come from Munich and that I had brought a message and greetings for the Maître. The butler then took my card from the doorman and disappeared with it. I was afraid Munkácsy wouldn't see me. At that time so many Hungarians beleaguered him that he turned many away. What if I were to suffer the same fate?
At last the butler came back and said that the Maître was expecting me in his studio. Happy, but with a palpitating heart, I entered the studio, where Munkácsy was working on sketches for the huge Viennese ceiling.¹ "So, what are the two Sándors up to?" he asked even before I could open my mouth. He meant Sándor Wágner and Sándor Liezen-Mayer. I quickly recovered my composure and gave him Liezen-Mayer's greetings (at the time I was not yet acquainted with Wágner), and we chatted about life in Munich and Hungarian affairs. His kindness loosened my tongue. I quickly told him all I knew. He asked what I was working on and told me that next time I came, I should bring my work with me to show him. "I can show you everything right now" I responded, ran downstairs to the cab, and took my drawings up to him. The Maître laid out the rolled-up worksheets and studied them at length. Some came under repeated scrutiny. At that point a visitor arrived, and seeing his card, Munkácsy hurried away. He led the visitor into his studio personally. He was extremely courteous with him and expostulated on the sketch of the ceiling fresco at some length. He introduced me, too, and only when the visitor left, did I discover that he was the Emperor Francis Joseph's brother.
He then resumed his scrutiny of my work. During our conversation, I mentioned that I wanted to rent a studio, whereupon he said, to my astonishment, "Isn't my studio big enough for us two?" I couldn't believe my ears. "But first, you must see Paris," he added. "I've seen it," I responded, and looked around for a corner where I could work. I set about drawing immediately; I was afraid that by the following day he'd forget his promise, and I did not wish to miss this favourable opportunity. A miracle had happened; an hour before I was still wondering whether he'd see me, and I was worried, too, about the financial aspect of finding a studio, and now a world-famous artist, a kind man took care of everything in a moment. When it was time for lunch he asked me to join him, but I was reluctant—I was afraid of losing my place. Neither before nor since in all my life have I met with such goodness and natural ease of manner. I couldn't believe that there was such a good man in the world. He took a friendly grip of my arm and led me into the dining room. From then on, I ate at his table, the next day, and the day after that, and so on, for a very long time. My circumstances improved considerably. I could work by his side. I became his pupil. He became my patron, all due to the goodness of his heart and his highmindedness. This is how I saw, at our very first meeting, not only the artist, but the man as well.
I came to love this extraordinary man very much. He was a thorough gentleman. That he was an extraordinary character was evident even from the way he dressed. Due to his height, he looked very handsome in light, chequered trousers and a long-backed blue coat with the white waistcoat that went with it. He always wore a polka-dotted blue bow-tie, and socks to match under pumps with bows. He was never without them. Add his large head, his tousled, snow-white hair, his high, intelligent forehead, his small, lively, deep-set eyes and ruddy cheeks. The expression on his face showed that he was different from other men.
His wife was a perfect hostess, and this helped his reputation. The Munkácsy soirées were brilliant, even for Paris. Many outstanding personages met here. Dumas fils, Alphonse Daudet, Ambroise Thomas, as well as Ede Reményi, Zsigmond Justh, Jenoý Zichy and General Türr were frequent visitors. On one occasion even King Milan of Serbia graced the evening with his presence. It was typical of Madame Munkácsy that for the occasion she managed to dress all the servants of her household in King Milan's livery, in just twenty-four hours.
It was during these soirées that Munkácsy perfected his manners. He was the soft-spoken Hungarian gentleman with whom and about whom they were glad to converse in Paris, although they don't really like foreign artists here. In conversation Munkácsy's superiority was beautifully on display, but never aggressively. Only money matters were beyond his grasp. Money matters were left to the care of his wife. His genius looked on them as of no importance, as trifles.

Maillol, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh

My Scottish painter friend James Pitcairn Knowles, whom I had known for some time, was different and had different tastes to those I had met in Munkácsy's circle. He was the man whose taste was closest to my own and he was a true friend. With him I found myself in the true context of art in the ideal sense of the term. We talked a lot about good painting and literature ancient and modern; we did much thinking in each other's company, and exchanged ideas. We delved together, and we grew together. He worked mainly in woodcuts; it is in this way that he wished to record his mystical ideas. He worked with great care, devotion, dedication, and love. I mostly painted or made lithographs. Later we lived in the same house, and though we worked on our own, we looked at each other's work every day.
Around 1890 he introduced me to Aristide Maillol, whom he was the first to recognize as a great artistic talent. They came from the same school and were never out of touch for long. For lack of financial success, Maillol was more than once downhearted, but with his words of encouragement Knowles was able each time to bolster his friend's spirits. I also came to like Maillol's works and ideas, and so, after meeting him, I maintained contact with the two of them, and the two of them only, for some time.
Around 1887, Maillol was a student of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and an admirer of the sculptor Bourdelle. He studied sculpture there for some time, until he enrolled in Colarossi's school, where, along with Pitcairn Knowles, he studied under Jean Paul Laurens and Henri Martin. Later he worked in his own home, a very old and neglected hôtel de ville on the Rue St. Jacques. He painted large canvases amidst great penury and without the least hope of success. The Salon regularly rejected his works, only later, when he submitted small objects d'art and tapestries did they realize that he was an artist of refined taste. He sent these small pieces to the objets d'art section of the Salon, which in Hungary, too, are classified as craft work, because he knew that this was the only way in which he could gain a foothold. This is important because if he had not been able to reach the public in this way perhaps he would not have achieved what he has achieved since then. Later Natanson showed interest in him, supported him, and today Maillol, the sculptor, is a great artist of whom the new French art is deservedly proud.
Among other things it was due to Maillol's prodding that I wanted to try my hand at embroidery and tapestries, which he was making at the time. Our styles differed of course, we produced our par excellence decorative craftwork in different ways and using different techniques, so that Paris criticism always dealt with us separately. This is natural, since Maillol was always predisposed towards the archaic. What he did wasn't altogether novel, but rather a Greek incarnation.
There were differences in technique, too; his stitches were further apart and were placed under each other, while mine were thick, long, and sewn one within the other; his handiwork was loose, easily rolled, while mine was hard of texture, like a thick Persian rug. The forms and colours showed an even greater difference. Our wives also helped in the execution of these works.
For several months in 1899, we and the Maillols lived almost like a family; this was in Banyuls, in a small, mountainous, rocky Catalan village, redolent with religion, where Maillol still lives. I painted a lot there and Maillol, who at first also devoted himself exclusively to painting, found what I was doing interesting, and said more than once that my paintings manifested a rare understanding of that unique setting.
Every dawn the Maillol family were under our window, waiting for us with bread and cinnamon-flavoured chocolate, to walk as was our habit to the mountain spring. There we ate figs and chocolates, drank great draughts of spring water, and we'd either set to work right away, or else we'd walk to a nearby homestead to paint. That is, I did the painting, while Maillol set about making sketches for his archaic gobelins with his usual care, love and conviction. He thought a great deal about the way to produce fine yarn, especially the dies. Seeing his experiments with sculpture, however, and since he was likely to listen to me, I prodded him to work more intensively at sculpture. This, as we know, brought results, because it was along those lines that he progressed to his present stature.
Naturally, I met all of the Maillol family in Banyuls. They include a wine merchant, a fisherman, a writer, a musician. The latter, an admirer of Wagner, is Gaspard Ribot Maillol; thanks to me, or because of me, I should say, he started painting. He is grateful to me to this day. He was eighteen at the time, talented, and with good taste. It is typical that he began painting right away, and it was only later that he started to draw. He showed himself to be an interesting person from the start. His uncle, Aristide Maillol, was thunderstruck; he couldn't get it into his head. But three years ago he wrote to me that Gaspard was going to have an exhibition at Druet in Paris, and later, that the exhibition was a success; all of the boy's pen drawings were sold.

I exhibited the painting My Grandmother in Paris about fifteen years ago.² It caught the attention of a company of artists who had much sympathy for each other's work. Several of them are outstanding artists today, whom everyone talks about. About eight months ago Bernheim showed those of their works which Thadée Natanson now owns. Mirbeau provided a preface for the catalogue. Vuillard, Bonnard and Valloton are well represented. I often saw them after I moved from Paris to nearby Neuilly. They came to visit me on Sundays. Denis, Serusier, Ranson and for a time Cottet were also of the company, and Toulouse-Lautrec, too, until his death. The pioneers, and in part the most important predecessors of these artists were Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Seurat and Signac among the painters, and Rodin among the sculptors, and of course Maillol, of whom I have previously spoken. I am sure I do not have to explain to anyone familiar with modern art who these artists are.
I met Cézanne only once, when I visited him in his studio. This studio was known for the fact that it contained not a single work by Cézanne; they were all sold at his recent first exhibition, which Vollard, the new, and as yet unprosperous, art dealer organized for him. I was told that he made around thirty-thousand francs from these pictures. He divided this sum into three parts, between his wife, his son and himself, then he sent them on their way, while he continued to work in the company of a very young Swedish writer in Marlotte. I saw only a beautiful old, Italianate figure drawing of a woman and an oil print hung askew from a nail on the wall, and without a frame. (This very interesting and practically incomprehensible thing, that he liked oil prints, was characteristic of Cézanne.) He was reluctant to speak, especially when I asked him about other artists. Perhaps it is worth noting what this undisputedly great artist said about three artists of equal merit. He called Puvis de Chavanne "a very great artist," Renoir "a talented man", and when I asked him about Gauguin, he merely said, "I don't know the gentleman in question," whereas he did. Gauguin was full of wonder and admiration for Cézanne's work.

My Grandmother prompted my meeting with Gauguin. At the Salon de Champs de Mars this was the painting that he, too, liked best. It was as a result of that meeting that he invited me to his studio in the Rue Vercingetorix. He had recently returned for the first time from Tahiti, that is he was already almost the real Gauguin. My meeting with him was as decisive as the meeting with Cézanne in Marlotte, near Fontainebleau, except this was not as simple but more Bohemian in nature, and accordingly more interesting in all its details. I went to see him in the evening. Already in the corridor I saw beautiful things, among them an especially beautiful still-life with fruit, which he had painted earlier, in the manner of Cézanne. (He never denied the latter's good influence on him.) When I entered the studio, I saw several figures in the half-light. A man with curly hair was playing the piano; that was Leclerque. Another, with long hair, was lying on the floor; this was Ruinard, the poet. A rope hang from the ceiling in the middle of the room and a monkey, ever on the move, climbed up and down that. Under it, on the floor, wearing a blue calico frock, sat a woman of a yellowish-blackish complexion, smiling dumbly; she was the artist's mistress. Gauguin was busy at the foot of the bed; this is how he reproduced his characterstic woodcuts. When he finished printing the sheet he was working on we shook hands, and the dark lady offered me tea. After the piano-playing ceased, we talked. He complained about his lack of success. His paintings had recently been on display at the Durand-Ruel gallery, but there were no buyers. The fact that even the Musée Luxembourg would buy none of his works sent him into fits of despair, and not only him, but almost everyone who sympathized with him. The paintings were returned to the studio where, thanks to the kind offices of friends, the best and most typical Gauguins could be had for fifty or a hundred francs. He could not understand his lack of success and blamed it on the white frames; after the exhibition, he immediately painted them yellow, then hung them up in his studio.
Gauguin treasured his independence so much that, as rumour had it at the time, Durand-Ruel had offered him ten thousand francs a year if he'd work only for him, but he turned this down.
He gave me three woodcuts made in the above-mentioned primitive manner as a souvenir, and I still have them; they are in good company in my studio in Budapest and my property in Kaposvár, together with woodcuts by Maillol and Valloton and my collection of original Chinese and Japanese drawings. These are complemented by some pieces by Denis, Vuillard and Bonnard. Of these artists, Denis showed the most understanding of Gauguin. He and Cottet are Gauguin's heirs and disciples, but Seruzier too could never free himself from his influence. And indeed, we owe Maillol to him. This is a not inconsequential addendum to art history, especially since today Maillol is considered of equal rank with Rodin, who is now the most famous sculptor in the civilized world.
The two of us, my Scots friend and I, also came to love Gauguin's art, not every single item, naturally, but the artist as he was. We spread his fame around Paris as best we could, where they either reviled him or thought he was mad. I might even venture to say that we were the first to improve his reputation.
We exerted ourselves in a similar manner in Maillol's interest.
The others, with the exception of Denis, were discovered by Natanson, not the above-mentioned Thadée, but Stefan Natanson, who did much to nurse French Impressionist painting and its offshoots. At the time the others, Vuillard, Natanson and their circle, paid little attention to Gauguin; they noticed him only after his beautiful, colourful woodcuts hit the market. Once I asked Seruzier why Gauguin was no longer in their company, and he said, "Il est parti"—he wants no part of us. Charles Maurice and Camille Mauclair were two literary supporters of Gauguin. Not Mirbeau, even though one can't accuse him of neglecting artists of Gauguin's conviction; after all, thirteen years previously, Vuillard had already mentioned to me when he was in Neuilly that he had seen a characteristic Van Gogh hanging on the wall in Mirbeau's country house. This took courage at a time when tout Paris with its philistine tastes considered Van Gogh no better than a leper. And now? Now to be sure they're eager to acquire his works.
These two names, Gauguin and Van Gogh, were left to close this particular "chapter". These are the two to whom—though I travelled along different roads—I was perhaps in the last resort, superficially, most closely related. There is a certain similarity between us, though none of us sought it be. Peculiar coincidences and similarities, rooted in the soul in our understanding of art and nature could well be the fountain in which all three of us delved. Probably all three of us equally admired the Chinese, the Persians, the Egyptians and the Greeks, as well as Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Orcagna (along with the Japanese). Even unwillingly, we felt their influence. Yet I am convinced that we are each different. Our starting points are different, the intermediate stages are different, and so are the final results. Gauguin's Noa-Noa is entirely different from Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or my own My Father with Uncle Piacsek Drinking Red Wine.

I painted my "black" paintings series in Neuilly. This was not because I saw things black, but because I wanted to paint things with black as my starting point. I was supported in this by the conviction that this was as legitimate as taking a purple blue, or any other colour as its starting point. I was very much interested in the colours black and grey at the time, and I was excited by the problem of using them in art. In short, I tried to interpret my motifs with these two colours. The contour lines so obvious in my current, highly-coloured works, were present in my "black" paintings, too, and if they're not as obvious in these earlier works, it is because the large dark areas overshadow them, which is only natural. These are not due to poor draughtsmanship, as some would like to think, but are the natural consequence of my painting methods.
The paintings shown with those of my companions at Durand-Ruel's are from this series. The other exhibitors included Maurice Denis, Vuillard, Valloton, Bonnard, Ranson, Seruzier, Besnard, Filiger, X. Roussel, Rysselberghe, Cross, Signac, Luce, Rochefoucauld and other painters, and the Belgian sculptor Minne. Maillol was not yet one of the company. The exhibition was well received by the critics, and my "black" paintings stood out among the brilliantly colourful pictures of the others; of these Geoffroy, for example, a member of the Académie Goncourt, praised my Small Bar with its many bottles especially highly in the papers, the same, needless to say, which back home brought the most adverse criticism. The paintings My Grandmother and My Parents After Forty Years of Marriage are from this series, the former being one of the earliest, the latter one of the last; this larger canvas I painted in 1897, when I visited my parents at Kaposvár. Chronologically, The Seine at Night is a typical bridge between the two. (I mention some of my paintings by title because I am not in the habit of dating them, and should anyone be interested in the phases I went through as I developed my style, this may perhaps help to guide them.)
It was from Neuilly that Maillol enticed me to his native parts in Banyuls, whose environs had not till then been exploited by artists, even though it is one of the most picturesque regions I have ever seen. Here, I soon saw everything in colour, though not yet as "sunny". This is where I painted those works of mine whose religiously simple yet colourful motifs served as a transition from the "black" series to the "sunny" or—if you will—stridently coloured series. It was the intensive blue of the ocean which provided the impetus. This was the turning-point. My present ideas and searches in painting date from this period. My studies and paintings done at that time convinced me, above all, that paintings should be executed at once; what's more, that the power of the colours must be intensified in the simplest way possible.

I have full confidence in the power and beauty of painting all at once. Thus, my main objective is that whatever I paint and on whatever scale—to the extent, of course, that this is physically possible—should be painted at once or, as painters say, at one sitting. This manner of painting reminds me of a flower or fruit that is still dewy. It had been my conviction for some time that this was the only way to paint, but my conviction was strengthened by studying the frescoes of the old Italian masters. These, too, are painted all at once, even if in pieces. This is why they are so masterly fresh and are incomparably more beautiful than the oil paintings that the same great artists repeatedly corrected.
I consider the "equal" manner of painting as part of painting in one sitting, by which I mean that every part of the work in progress must be kept in the same state, and must be finished together. I am firmly convinced that this is the only way to produce a good picture; it is the only way to paint things that are complete.
As I have said, my studies of nature at Banyuls taught me that painting in one sitting is not enough, the application to the canvas of thinner or heavier coats of colour, the filling in of a drawing with colour, in short, valeur is not enough; it is important, in fact, it is more important to learn how to intensify the power of colour. Since I have realized this, I have given up "undercoating," I do not care whether a colour will seem cold or warm because of the base under it. Theories of technique learned from others must be cast aside, regardless of whose they are, and technique must be reduced to the simplest form possible. This means that colours must not be superimposed under any circumstances. Every colour is there in the tube and need only be taken out and used just the way it is, always keeping a unified style in mind, the colour simply needs to be applied to the canvas. But it needs to be put where it belongs, and so that it can stay there, just as we have applied it! If mixing colours becomes necessary, it must be done on the palette. We do not mix anything on the canvas; this is the negative imperative of the empowerment of colour.
This trumpeting of colours probably comes from my present mood. This is what my surroundings are now, and that's the effect they have on me. Colours like this surround us in my new house and garden in Kaposvár. I have come to love not only the scarlet-coloured sage and the red single geranium, and also the pure white flowers, but even more so the chrome-yellow zinnias. These are the colours I am presently looking for, practically collecting them, in my home, too, in objects, on shawls and walls.

Toulouse-Lautrec, Jarry

Toulouse-Lautrec was a bit of a slob; he drank and stayed up nights, and so I, who did not like to stay up, spoke to him mostly during the early hours of various soirées. At such times he'd often invite me to make lithographs at Ancourt's printing office, where he was an habitué. Next to the smell of absinthe, he liked the smell of printer's ink best. He often drew on stone. He sketched the ladies from the cabaret into a small notebook, and on this basis he created his brilliant works out of a few characteristic strokes. A few lines with gorgeous, decorative colours, this is what his best works are like. At the time, he made many drawings of Yvette Guilbert, but he'd also paint, even if less frequently, the famous Goulue, a can-can dancer at the Moulin Rouge. In his studio I also saw a large painting of another famous person, the cabaret singer Aristide Bruant, with a large red choker tied around his neck. He also kept an old Forain drawing, which he loved.
My last meeting with him was in his studio in Montmartre. God, what a number of absinthe bottles and glasses were there on a table, right by the door! Two young gentlemen, one was his cousin, lay on a bed with a baldachin, when I went in. It was Bohemian of him that Lautrec didn't even introduce me to his cousin, and yet we talked through the afternoon with what he termed "a sip" (always just a sip) of absinthe. His studio was full of easels, on them drawings for his posters. Before we left his studio together, the two cousins engaged in a bout of fencing. This match or rather physical exercise was a strange sight: the bow-legged Lautrec, barely taller than one metre, and the other exceptionally tall and thin man as they fenced. On top of this, they both wore glasses. What can I say, there is no human dignity in ridiculous situations.
Even though he had a number of strange characteristics, Lautrec was the most important artist in our group. His was indeed a unique talent. Posters of sophistication and taste to adorn street walls were his particular achievement. There hasn't been a poster-making lithographer nearly anything like him since he died. His are on a par with the Japanese prints. If we credit Chéret with creating posters with the simplest means possible, then it was Lautrec who perfected these means. He is of incomparably higher artistic quality than Chéret.
Valloton, the Frenchified Swiss artist, made some first rate woodcuts in the nineties. He drew attention to himself with his paintings as well, and had followers, setting a trend for many new artists together with other more important members of our company, a trend of which Matisse and Picasso are now the chief representatives. The woodcuts established his reputation as an artist. His black-and-white woodcuts, which brought him most success, were published in Berlin, in the journal Pan, published in Berlin by Meier-Graefe and Julius Bierbaum. Of our company, Lautrec's lithographs and Knowles' drawings also appeared in Pan. The editors were soon disheartened by the intrigues of Berlin artists and writers. They resigned, and the admirable internationalism on which it was based failed, and the journal turned into the Pan of German artists of "heavy" tastes. It became useless in my eyes, and I did not send them even my first larger lithograph, intended specifically for them—a drawing of a young American girl in a large hat and a long Empire dress.
Vuillard and Bonnard, just like Monet and Sisley, would have never become what they were without each other. They had a great need of each other. Vuillard's art was at its most interesting when he appeared with his small blackish-gray and reddish-brown pictures. Many of his decorative works characterized by tiny spots, stripes and dark colours speak of an artist of refined taste. Bonnard is somewhat more colourful, and always treats his motifs with humour, and from their playful side. He is one of the most witty of French artists. His drawings and illustrations are also very interesting and powerful. His forms, intellect and art make him a true Montmartre figure.
However, let us return to Paris and my artist friends, whom I had left behind only in space, while visiting them in spirit time and time again. Last year ³ I went to see them with my own eyes. They have kept up the friendship which began fifteen years ago at the Julian. They meet, as in times past, in each other's homes. They take the trouble of a Sunday to go out to Roussel, or on Saturdays to Denis in St. Germain; on Tuesdays to Maillol at Marly-le-Roy; just as these latter will go from these country places on a Friday to Vuillard for déjeuner, on Monday to Bonnard, at the Rue Lepic near the Moulin de la Galette. Now that my wife and I spent some time in Paris, we were also expected at Vuillard's every Friday. Here I met all my acquaintances, partly because they were happy to see us again, and partly because this was the only day that Vuillard was free. As long as he is alive he wants to keep in touch with his old pals, even those who no longer fulfill his standards but are kind and good men—and married. With the latter it is thanks to the wives that he is in touch; formerly they were either his models or their girlfriends. Today they are respected and charming French ladies. Bonnard's wife, too, is a sweet woman. She invited us to dinner the first time on the day of the opening of the Bonnard exhibition with Bernheim. This young and gay Parisian woman was waiting for us in their lovely, light, coquette small apartment; she was wearing silver slippers, a light silk dress, and a fringe covering her forehead. Next to her their large dog wagged his tail in a friendly manner. The large, lion-headed musical composer Claude Terrasse was there, too, Bonnard's brother in law, and the writer Romain Coolus. There was a well laid table, and on it many fine wines, champagne, delicious fish and meats. After dinner we went to the Moulin de la Galette, then on to all the dives which by today have changed character, having become elegant and expensive, such as the old Chat-Noir and the old Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec's home from home. All these around the Place Pigalle, not far from the old Chat-Noir, as if they were the offshoots of the other famous nightspot, the nest of the can-can dancer Goulue, but nursed by other men. As day broke, they took us to a place to eat choucroute.
Another acquaintance of mine, who perhaps is worthy of mention in this place, was the young writer Alfred Jarry. I think I met him even before I met the Lautrec lot, this in a company of young writers who usually met in a drinking place on the Rue Saint-Honoré. Hirsch of the double name was one of the company, who is now a regular contributor to Le Figaro; so was his brother, and perhaps also the poet Cremnitz, I think, of whom I later painted a pastel portrait owned by Marcell Nemes, and others, too, including the above-mentioned Jarry. The same Jarry whose eccentricities were so widely discussed; first, his room decorated with skulls, then his play, Ubu, le roi, which started with the word "merde". He was a gifted and fascinating man, who later became a serious writer. His reviews were published in the Revue Blanche. It seems he liked my work, because on the occasion when My Grandmother was exhibited, he wrote only about this in his review, as well as of Whistler and Cottet, ignoring the other thousand paintings on display. He even threatened to write my biography, but he could not carry that out, because I left Paris for Hungary
It was during the Whistler fever that the Irishman Oscar Wilde was first heard of and Beardsley, the English draughtsman, established a name for himself among the French. Paris was fascinated by both of them. Wilde kept the most intellectual company; the Revue Blanche also favoured him: it devoted much space to his works, especially his bon mots with their many interesting paradoxes. I have always regretted that by pure chance we never actually met, though we both frequented more or less the same circles. He spent many evenings at the Café L'Avenue next to the Montparnasse railway station. If my memory serves me right, he was closely acquainted with Jean Lorrain, Montesquieu-Fesensac, Gandara, and probably also with Caran d'Ache, since they all belonged to the same circle and, as far as I know, Whistler frequented their company, as well as the musician Dussotoy and the painter Helleu at one time.
Of their group, Gandara also made a reputation for himself as an interesting artist; this was around 1890, but subsequently his opportunism got the better of him; he became the painter of duchesses and great lords, like Sargent in England. Helleu held on longer, but he, too, changed directions for the worse and is producing drawings and woodcuts for English journals, the nature of which is determined by place, time and the money they are expected to fetch.
Around that time, another very interesting group gathered every Tuesday in the home of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Whistler was there, too, who had the habit of settling himself in a corner and listening, through a haze of smoke, to the florid conversation of his host. The writers in the company, including Mallarmé, were favoured by the Revue Blanche and the Mercure de France; here, they found not only a refuge but staunch support, too, in the face of the many deceitful attacks to which they were subjected by conservatives. There was good reason for searching for this support since these highly gifted writers were as persecuted by "official" writers as the Impressionist painters were by "official" painters and like-minded thickheads.
When I went to Paris, Rimbaud's spirit was still in the air, but this gradually quietened. Even Rimbaud suffered a crisis of confidence in himself and his writings. But if we mention just five names from the field of battle: Verlaine, Mallarmé, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin and Cézanne, we can safely say that this new era was a beautiful and "successful" one.
Already around 1894, I was turning the pages of Stéphane Mallarmé's beautiful book, Les Pages, which was printed in Brussels. A copy of it was dedicated to me by Doctor Bourbon, while I, rather immodestly, placed within its pages, by way of decoration, small coloured contour drawings that I made while I was reading it. My French friends were surprised, to say the least, when they came to Neuilly and found on my table Mallarmé's book with my "illustrations"; they thought that the drawings really were illustrations, a legitimate part of the book. How did I come by this great honour, to be thus commissioned, they asked. I told them how, while the book, which many found eccentric because of the exceptionally beautiful language, on my part I couldn't read enough of it due precisely to the fragrant language that was issuing forth from its pages. In my eyes, only Rabelais and Ronsard could come up to its standards. ß

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1 - The ceiling fresco of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
2 - in 1894
3 - in 1910