Welcome to Red Poulaine's Musings. Here we hope to entertain and delight you with stories about the people and times from bygone eras and the vintage images that act as our windows into their times.
Red Poulaine is a husband and wife joint enterprise on Etsy. We take pride in offering fine, interesting vintage items to our customers, while providing the best customer service possible. Please come visit us at http://www.etsy.com/shop/redpoulaine today.
This week's featured cards feature Lucy Gerard (sometimes spelled Lucie Gérard). Born Marie-Louise Philiberte Lucy Gérard in Lyon, France, 1872, Lucy Gérard was a popular stage actress of Belle Époque France. Unfortunately, we know very little about her, except that in the first decade of the 20th century in France she was a great beauty, and her stage performances were very popular.
In the following image, she is framed by an Art Nouveau illustration designed to leave room for the sender's message. Post cards of this type fall under the category of what French collectors call a précurseur, a
card made before the back sides were divided to allow for written
communication. Prior to 1904, when the backs of these cards were
undivided as this one was, only the recipient's address was allowed on
the back side, and often short letters were written on the image side
instead. Discovering this, publishers produced picture postcards with
small images, often highly decorative, and allowing lots of space for
written communication.
One of her most famous roles was that of Fanny Essler, or Elssler, an Austrian Ballerina who in the play "l'Aiglon," by Edmond Rostand, was the love interest of Napoleon II. The role of Napoleon II, by the way, was played by the great Sarah Bernhardt. In fact, Rostand wrote the part specifically for her. The play was a huge success, and became one of Sarah Bernhardt's favorites. Playing the romantic lead opposite Bernhardt must have been quite a coup, and this postcard image, the one we find most often of Mlle. Gérard, is of her costumed for that role.
The hand-coloring on the following portrait is particularly lovely. Note that the date 9/9 1906 is written in the bottom left corner of both the face and the reverse, and the card was posted in 1906. We have not attempted a translation of the message, but we do see the word souvenir, which is the French word for memory, so we believe it's quite possible that this card was sent as a remembrance, by Clarion to Mlle. Ninon Peyran at the Chateau St. Charles, of a special evening at the theater during which Gerard performed.
The following image is a very nice example of the sort of photo-montage Leopold Reutlinger is so
well known for. Here we have famed stage actress Lucy Gérard
superimposed onto an image of the Bordeaux Amphitheater. Also known as
the Palais Gallien, it is surrounded by the cobbled streets of what was
once known as Burdigala. Burdigala once may have been the capital
of the ancient Roman province Gallia Aquitaina during the reign of the
emperor Augustus. The amphitheater once held up to 15,000 spectators.
Mlle. Gérard passed away in 1941. We feel a little sad when we think
about it, how she was born into a world of horses and carriages,
experienced France in one of its most glorious periods, Paris, in one of
its most glamorous and hopeful, and then to have died at a time when
her world had so dramatically changed, into one of machines and
motorcars, with her country occupied by Hitler's forces, no end in
sight, and not living long enough to experience the liberation...okay,
snap out of it Red :)
Here we have a series of four very special cards, representing the four seasons. Each of the seasons is personified by one of four famous Belle Époque stage performers. Each of these four cards is in particularly fine condition, though posted in 1909.
The Four Seasons, photographed by Reutlinger and posted in 1909
They must have been kept very carefully and lovingly, because, by their appearance, they are practically brand new! They were all sent by the same person, Ninette, to M. Emile Jourdan-Brive, who was clearly someone dear to her. Each includes a brief message, such as,"a thousand kisses from Ninette," written in a nice hand on the back of the card. Our researches suggest that Emile may have been a member of the Jourdan-Brive family of Marseille, who were well-known exporters of truffles, capers, wines, and perfumes to England during the Victorian era.
The images themselves, appear to be photogravures, made from photographs taken by the famous theatrical portraitist Leopold Reutlinger of Paris, probably circa 1905. Deeply impressed in fine, ivory-toned stock, these images are truly precious.
Although we are merchants, and generally sell our wares on a piece by piece basis, we simply cannot bring ourselves to break up so lovingly cared for, and romantic, a set of cards as this one. Consequently, we are selling these four cards as a set.
Note: There will be another post reflecting this listing due to our use of an automatic posting system, which ensures that every time we post an item in our shop a post appears in the blog. We are offering this post to provide you with complete information about the set, including high-res scans of the front and back of each card, since we are limited to only 5 images in our listing on Etsy.
Le Printemps, Spring
Le Printemps (Spring), is represented by the breathtaking Arlette Dorgere. Surrounded by early blossoms, her hair in a woodland sprite's disarray, she tenderly cradles a nest of tiny bird's eggs.
Le Printemps, by Reutlinger
Mlle. Dorgere was a very popular artiste who performed at the Scala, and in many other venues in Paris and elsewhere. We have not been able to find any information about her early life, but we know that her image was captured by the famous poster artist Jules Cheret, and that at about the time the photograph for this card was taken (circa 1904), she was already so successful that she was able to purchase a lovely chateau, the Chateau Vigneus sur Seine, in a quiet neighborhood south of Paris. It was on a large wooded lot, with a pond, and when the pressures of her work grew heavy, she would ride in her chauffeur-driven limousine to this retreat. In 1929, she sold the chateau, which she had renamed Chateau Dorgere, and retired quietly to Morocco, which was then a colonial protectorate of France.
Reverse of Le Printemps
Translation: A thousand beautiful kisses from Ninette
L’ Eté, Summer
L’ Eté (Summer), is represented by Mlle. Marcelle Yrven. In this image, she clutches flowers to her breast, while smiling joyfully, a goddess of the season.
L' Eté, by Reutlinger
Mlle. Yrven (1877-1949) was a fascinating woman who was not only a wonderful stage performer, but also an author, a poet, and outspoken on the subject of women in society. She wrote a short book on feminism, "La Comedienne Et Le Feminisme," as it related to women in the theater, which was not only interesting politically, but historically, as it pertained to La Belle Époque theater, really fascinating. We don't think it is available in English online, but it is short enough that if you have a little French, and the online translator, you can work through it.
Reverse of L' Eté
Translation: Best kisses from Ninette
L' Automne, Autumn
L' Automne (Autumn), is the season during which the wine grapes are harvested, as depicted by the maenad Mlle. Renee Despres, wearing vines and fruit of the vine.
L' Automne, by Reutlinger
This is a wonderful image in which she smiles at us invitingly, offering us the celebration of the season. Unfortunately, we have no biographical information on her, apart from the fact that she did appear on the playbills of a number of theaters in Paris, and that, from other images we've seen, she was a most elegant lady of the Belle Époque theater.
Reverse of L' Automne
Translation: Embraces (or, perhaps, kisses) Fernand for me Ninette [We find this just a bit confusing, since these cards all were addressed to M. Emile Jourdan-Brive, but perhaps Fernand was his middle or nickname.]
L' Hiver, Winter
L' Hiver (Winter), is here pictured not so differently than it might be in England, or elsewhere in Europe or the United States. We have the yule logs, Holly, the evergreen tree, and is that a bit of mistletoe Miss Campton wears in her hair beneath her hood?
L' Hiver, by Reutlinger
Miss Campton, like many performers in the Paris of that time, was English; she was born Emily Straham Cager in Brighton, in April of 1882. Here, photographed by Reutlinger, she was also often found in stunning images produced by Professor Stebbing, another well-known and prolific Belle Époque photographer. She was apparently a very special friend of Paul Derval, who for many years directed the Folies Bergere, and though they did not, as far as we know, marry, when she died at a relatively young age of cancer, in Paris, she was interred in the Derval family tomb.
Reverse of L' Hiver
Translation: Another kiss from Ninette
As a complete set, these cards evoke the magical and celebratory relationship between people and nature that often seems the very essence of so much art during this period.
The listing for this set will be available within the next 24 hours.
Like too many of our favorite images, this card has come and gone in a matter of a few hours, but she and her fabulous costume can have a place on our blog forever. We don't know the model's name, but we love this image!
The same model appears on another postcard below, image by Jean Agelou.
Grace La Rock, who, with Helmut Schmidt, operates Boudoir Cards, a beautiful site and a valuable source of information on postcards of La Belle Époque, as well as French and ethnic erotic postcards, has done a watercolor painting inspired by Agélou's image of our unidentified model. Helmut and Grace are customers of ours and, on hearing about this painting, we asked if we might share it on our blog.
So many of our customers are involved in art of one sort or another and draw inspiration from these fine old images, and we are so very pleased when we can share examples of this with our readers. Below, is the original postcard image and the painting Grace created from it. Just wonderful.
Photograph by Jean Agélou of Unidentified Artiste Lounging in Lingerie and Wonderful Hat
Original Painting by Grace La Rock
Here is what Grace had to say about this painting:
Capturing me with her hypnotic eyes, and voluptuous curves, I find this vintage doll rather intriguing. She was my first water color rendering after almost 20 years. I prefer pale vintage rose for color, but chose to make her into more of a cupcake like she is. I plan to paint other poses of her in the future with more muted tones. This photograph was originally made by Jean Agélou, and shows that nudity is not necessary to become erotic. If only I had her hat and vintage lingerie.
Talk about a time machine.... The feel of the period
derived from a card like this one is sensational. There is something about a fine photograph in natural
sepia tones that is just so...wonderful. Images of Eve being tempted by the snake abound, being a favorite of artists of all ages, but rarely has Eve managed to look quite so humorously nonchalant about the encounter as she does in this image by Henri Manuel.
This postcard, published about 1900, features a superbly naive image of an unidentified model
“en collant” (in a body
stocking) with a really great snake! One has to wonder, when viewing an
image of this kind, whether the goal was humor, titillation, gender
politics, a biblical reference of any kind, or a mix of oh, so many
things, but the quality of the image is undeniable. Her facial
expression seems to us to say,
“Et alors! You think I can't handle
this?”
This card was published
by SIP (the Societe Industrielle de Photographie), one of the most
prolific French postcard publishers at that time. The image was
photographed by Henri Manuel, and given the age of the card (its
production date, by its undivided back, is likely to have been before
1904), the photo would have been taken not long after Monsieur Manuel
and his brother, Gaston (about whom we can find no information
whatsoever), opened their first portrait studio in Paris, in 1900.
Henri
Manuel's name appears on many of the cards we bring into our shop, and
though most of the subjects we deal in are very lighthearted, Manuel
himself was a serious photographer, and an astute business man. He
became well known not only for his portraits of theatrical
personalities, risque nudes, and romantic fantaisies, but more, for his
portraits of famous politicians, art, architecture, and in 1910,
“Manuel’s studio began providing a commercial service to news agencies
for photographs known as ‘L’Agence universelle de reportage Henri
Manuel.’” His studio grew to be the largest in Paris, a
recognized center for the development of the
photographic arts (please forgive the pun ☺), and for the three decades between 1914 and 1944,
Henri Manuel held the post of official photographer for the French
government. Because we know his studio operations were shut down during
WWII, we wonder if during the last years he held that government post
(when France was under German occupation), he worked for
“Free France,”
but we haven't yet found a lot of history on that period. Henri Manuel
passed away in 1947.
Just to give you an idea of the broad scope
of the man's work, you can examine a few of the approximately 2500
photographs Manuel's studio produced of French prisons and juvenile facilities between the years 1929 and 1931, for the French Department of
Justice. Pretty grim stuff, but though Red Poulaine is very much about
the frolicsome fun, we feel it's important to give you background on our
photographers and artistes when possible, and well...we just love the
stories.
In Ida Fuller, née Pinckney (October 1, 1867-August 5, 1922), the well known Belle Époque "interpretive" dancer, we have a very clear example of the competitive twists and turns that sometimes occurred between performers of la Belle Époque.
Ida Fuller became widely known for her "skirt" dancing, also known as "butterfly" or "serpentine" dancing. This was a variety of dance which was, as far as we can determine, developed by the famous dancer, choreographer, and inventor, Loïe Fuller (January 15, 1862-January 2, 1928), a remarkable woman whose name became, in many ways, synonymous with Art Nouveau and the Belle Époque. Only one of the ways in which this is remarkable is the fact that Loïe Fuller (born Marie Louise Fuller) was a somewhat short, chubby girl from Illinois, not known for being a great beauty, who after gaining a middling reputation as an actress and singer in the States, made her way to Paris, opened at the Folies Bergeres, and became an almost instant success. Although she did return, now and then, to the U.S., and maintained her citizenship here, she basically adopted France as her home, and France, most certainly, adopted her.
Loïe Fuller also founded a number of dance schools in the United States and Europe for students interested in following the path of this iconic dancer. A group of students at one such school, L'École de Loïe Fuller, can be seen in the following image:
Called her "muses," or "Fullerettes" Miss Fuller is said to have doted on her students (one of whom was, for a short time, Isadora Duncan), and in the choreography and production end of performances with these girls, her work was almost as highly regarded as was she herself for her own interpretive dance routines.
A pioneer of modern dance, Loïe Fuller was also the developer of the "serpentine," or "skirt" dance. Part of the magic of this style, which involved the manipulation of sometimes hundreds of yards of silk, creating flowing patterns around and above the dancer, was the effect of colored lights shone up through a glass floor upon which the dancer performed. Miss Fuller was one of the earliest developers of colored gels for theatrical lighting, as well as a number of chemical formulas for use in lighting effects. Though not born into high society, or highly educated, she counted among her closest friends, top ranking scientists and inventors, members of European royalty, and artists of all mediums.
Volumes could be (and have been), written about Loïe Fuller, dubbed "La Loie" by Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme and often affectionately called Lo-Lo by her admiring fans. The style of dance she introduced to the world was much copied and imitated. Her work was even parodied. In his book, The Victorian Visitors: Culture Shock in Nineteenth Century Britain, Rupert Christiansen tells of one amusing example: "the music hall star Little Tich, who parodied her [Loïe Fuller's "serpentine" dancing], as Miss Turpentine, swanning around the stage in yards of rapturous muslin and then breaking the sublime illusion by stopping to scratch her leg."
Scores of women claimed a close relationship to Loïe Fuller. Some even claimed to be her sister, going so far as to use the last name of Fuller, most of them illegitimately. But at least one could legitimately claim a familial relationship and the use of the Fuller name, and that one was Ida Fuller.
Less information can be found regarding Ida Fuller than Loïe. Born Ida Pinckney, in Forest City Iowa, in 1867, in biographical articles concerning Loïe, Ida is often dismissed as a mere imitator, a pretender to Loïe's own unique art form, the serpentine dance. That Ida was a latecomer, who made use of Loïe's already developed style to work out her own routines, is almost certain. To dismiss her, however, as a mere imitator, is probably not entirely fair.
It has been suggested that Ida's "claims" that she was a relation of Loïe's, were untrue. Our research suggests otherwise. Ida Pinckney married Frank Rodney Fuller, Loïe's elder brother, making the two women sisters-in-law. Frank was an electrician with extensive knowledge of Loïe's lighting effects, reputed to have been involved in her earliest successes with her dance routines, and it is likely that he used his skills to help his wife in her own dance routines.
The Lake Mills Graphic, a newspaper published in Lake Mills, Iowa, made note of Ida Fuller as she passed through town. The following snippets were shared on a genealogical forum by one of Ida Fuller's relatives:
Lake Mills Graphic, Iowa, 17 Oct 1894:
Lake Mills Graphic, Iowa 6 July 1898:
We also found a copy of an emergency passport application filled out by Ida in 1898, in Vienna. Witnessing this application is Frank R. Fuller, who, as mentioned above, was Loïe Fuller's older brother.
U.S. Passport Application for Ida Fuller, Issue Date: 26 Nov 1898*
This document at least establishes that Ida's claim to a familial relationship, if by marriage, is true enough.
Additionally, the "Fire Dance," a routine for which Loie herself became very well known, and to whom its invention is generally credited, was, (evidenced by our research), actually an invention not of Loïe's, but of Ida's, who performed the routine widely, both in Europe and in the United States.
In Forty Years of Observation of Music and Drama, by Robert Grau, 1909 Broadway Publishing Co., Grau, clearly a fan of Loïe Fuller's work, praised her artistic accomplishments, and bemoaned the fact that her genius had gone unappreciated in America. However, when touching on Ida, he writes (on page 240):
Ida Fuller is not a sister of Loie, but her sister in law. She married Frank Fuller, an electrician, who was closely identified with Loie's first success It is only fair to Ida to explain that her greatest achievement, the basic foundation of the success which she has so struggled for, the fire dance, is her own creation, as more than one important interest in theatricals has discovered by decisions in courts of equity, which give to Ida Fuller, for all time, undisputable protection to her patents and creations.
Loie's brother Burt (Loie's younger brother), also apparently an electrician, is often credited with having worked closely with Loie in the production of her routines, and Frank (her older brother), often goes unmentioned. We suspect that a rift developed between Loie and Frank, and can only imagine the unfortunate vituperations which must have arisen between them when Frank assisted his wife, Ida, in the development of the "Fire Dance."
On the other hand, we need to remember that although Loïe Fuller had the reputation of being extremely secretive as far as her "serpentine" dance routines and their lighting effects were concerned, in show business, whether in the moving picture industry, which was in its early infancy at that time, or on the stage, between dancers, or stage magicians (whose illusions immediately come to mind when thinking of Loïe and Ida Fuller's work), feuds between performers made the press, and what made the press made for public interest, and that translated into showers of gold. So we may never know for certain whether or not Ida and Frank actually hijacked Loïe's invention of serpentine dancing, or whether it was willingly shared among members of the same family.
If in France the reception of this style of dancing was embraced with excitement and enthusiasm, it was not always so elsewhere. Below is a quote from On and Off, a collection of theatrical interviews published in London, in 1894 by journalist Gilbert Dalziel, who refers to himself as "Mr. Call Boy" (note that the satirical voice of the book calls into question the accuracy of anything reported) in which he reveals, during the introduction to an interview with dancer Mimi St. Cyr, the contempt he feels for this style:
"As certainly as the Serpentine dance has been overdone, so has it been misnamed. The Serpentine dance, as we know it, is not serpentine at all. It's a waving of the skirts which is far more suggestive of clothes hanging out to dry in a high wind than of serpents."
We think it is rather a shame that Mr. Call Boy should have written so derisively of the style of dance in which Ida Fuller specialized, particularly when earlier in the book, he publishes an interview she granted him! Following is a portion of that interview in which Ida Fuller briefly, and somewhat humorously talked about one aspect of her dancing:
"I hear that this dancing with the arms is much more fatiguing than dancing with the legs. Is that a fact, Miss Fuller?"
"It is just that, Mr. Call Boy. And for why? In dancing with your arms you have to hold them up so, or stretch them out like that (suiting actions to words), and all the blood runs out of them. There's not much natural strength where there's no blood, you know, and consequently one kind of dancing is more tiring than the other. I find the Butterfly dance a tremendous strain. Dancing with your legs is a different thing altogether. They are more or less in their natural position; the feet are mostly pointed to the floor, and when a leg is thrown above the head, it is only for a moment. It is back again before it knows it has been there!"
In Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic, Victor Arwas describes the physical challenges of this kind of dancing, particularly in terms of the manipulation of the long bamboo rods to which were attached the flowing silks. In fact, La Loie, and presumably Ida Fuller also, sometimes manipulated hundreds of yards of silk during her performances, causing them to gracefully billow and take shape as high as thirty feet in the air above her.
But, as to the artistic merits of this style of dance, our readers can be the judge. The following YouTube video will treat you to a delightful collection of very early motion picture clips, wherein a number of women (who knows, perhaps one of them is Ida Fuller!), perform this style of dance.
*Although we have read that Loie Fuller, herself, never made a motion picture of her work, we observe that the dancer in clip number seven does at least resemble La Loie.
*This image of Ida Fuller's U.S. Passport Application was from Ancestry.com. (Source Citation: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Emergency Passport Applications (Issued Abroad), 1877-1907; Collection Number: ARC Identifier 1187503 / MLR Number A1 515; NARA Series: M1834; Roll #: 14; Volume #: 22. Source Information: Ancestry.com. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007.)
Unlike Leopold Reutlinger and Count
Ostorog, aka Walery, who seemed to specialize in "entertainment"
photography, Henri Manuel, who with his brother, Gaston, operated the
largest photography studio in Paris, covered a very broad array of
subjects. That is not to say that Walery and Reutlinger didn't ever step
out of the showgirl portrait genre, we know they did, but Manuel was
the official photographer for the French government between 1914 and
1944, established one of the earliest "news" photo services, and was
well known for his architectural studies.
He did not, however, shy away
from "eye candy;" far from it! He was quite adept at risque images, and
managed to bring a very artful feel to many of his "artiste" portraits.
This
card offers a fine example of this, we think. Without question, la
Belle Epoque, in France, was the era of the chrysanthemum. In images of
pretty young dancers, mothers with their little girls in tow, opera
divas, etc., the use of the chrysanthemum as a hair decoration was
ubiquitous. Most often, they are seen worn at the temples, and here
Manuel positions the flowers in their accustomed location, but without
removing them from the stem, creating a thoughtful study with a feel of
nature, and the placement of the dragonfly is wonderful. Really a
gorgeous image.
***Note*** It might be of some interest to
collectors that during WWII almost all of the photographic plates housed
in the Manuel studio were destroyed, making images by H. Manuel all but
irreplaceable.
Thanks to Wikipedia for most of the historical information in this posting.
We are happy to announce that, as the happy purchaser of our 1,000th item on Etsy, Karen Donaldson (oneundonebird) will be receiving the very special Cléo de Mérode postcard featured in our Giveaway. Congratulations, Karen!
Exquisite Cleo De Merode Giveaway Card, circa 1900
We are currently getting our packages ready to ship, so Karen should be receiving her gift in just a few short days.
Many thanks to all of our wonderful customers who have helped us to reach this milestone! We are grateful to each and every one of you.
The featured cards in our shop currently include images of women with beautiful, long hair.
Prior to the 1920s, the traditional hairstyles for women almost always seemed to include long hair. That hair might be pinned up to fantastic heights, but take out the pins and the hair fell well past the shoulders, sometimes to the waist, hips, or even farther. And, as anyone who's ever worn long hair knows, taking care of that extra long mane takes lots of time and effort. Which may be one reason that we look with such amazement at these images of women wearing their long and luxurious hair down, so that it accentuates their beauty and grace.
The first of our featured cards is, of course, the card that we will be giving away with our 1,000th purchase. (See details.) In this image, Cléo de Mérode wears her hair down and we can see that, at least in front, her hair descends below her bustline, indicating that the full length is almost certainly well down her back. As always, of course, she is lovely.
The second of our featured images is a lovely photograph of an unidentified model, holding a bouquet of violet-colored flowers, whose hair falls down her back to arrive in the vicinity of her derriere. This model's hair may be the longest of those featured. The beautifully hand-colored card was published by Misange, most probably in either France or Germany sometime about 1910.
Our next featured image depicts an actress with beautiful long curls and a wild feathered hat. The expression on her face is so wonderful, making us think that she offers some words of wisdom for some wanderer. Perhaps, given the deliberately tattered nature of her gown, she is a fairy in disguise, and is about to gift some hero or heroine with some magical ability. Her hair, certainly, is worthy of any fairy queen.
Of note is the fact that this is a signed card, apparently signed in 1912 following a stage performance in Beaune (pronounced almost as in the English word "bone"), Burgundy, which is between Paris and Geneva. Based on her signature, the actress' name is Miry Cassari, or perhaps Lassari, but we have been unable to find any information about her and she remains a mystery. This is a wonderful image, and in a way there is something wistfully romantic and magical about the autograph of a forgotten actress. So often we have read about the immortality of the old gods having been dependent upon the worship of their followers. Perhaps, merely through the appreciation of this fine, evocative image, we can breathe a little life into the "joie de vivre" expressed by this lovely young woman, so long ago, and share in some of it ourselves.
The final featured item is this lovely biogravure by Steglitz, circa 1905. The maiden portrayed in this image is crowned by a wreath of flowers, which, together with her long, unbound hair symbolizes Spring and the purity and innocence of youth. Appropriately, the photographer has captured her with her gaze turned down, deftly maintaining the Arcadian ambiance.
Red Poulaine has been in business for so short a time, that it really took us by surprise when we realized that we will soon be selling our 1,000th item! We thank all of you very much for being our wonderful customers, and to celebrate this event, we plan to include a very special card, one that we hope any of our customers would be very happy to add to their collections, in the order that includes our 1,000th sale as a special thank you.
So, with the clock ticking and the calendar pages flying, we conducted a search far and wide for just the right card, one with a very beautiful image and an enticing history, to grace the collection of one very special customer. And we found it!
This beautiful image of Cléo de Mérode will belong to the customer who makes the 1,000th purchase from our shop.
Cléo de Mérode (September 27th , 1875-October 17th, 1966) is possibly the most well-known dancer of La Belle Époque. Certainly she was the postcard queen of the era, and took great care with the images of her, making careful use of the medium to help promote her public recognition. Her postcard images are some of the most sought after and often the most expensive of all the "artistes."
The daughter of the Austrian-born nobleman and landscape painter Karl von Mérode, and given the exotic name Cléopâtre Diane de Mérode at birth (although her mother called her Lulu), she started taking dance lessons when only 7- or 8-years-old and made her stage debut at the tender age of 11. As Cléo de Mérode, she went on to become an international star, known for her tiny waist, grace, and exquisite beauty. As one of the most glamorous of the stars of that time, she was sought after by many artists and photographers. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Puyo, Alfredo Muller, Giovanni Boldini, and Gustav Klimt painted her, Alexandre Falguière sculpted her, and photographers such as Léopold Émile Reutlinger, who took the image above, Félix Nadar, Henri Manuel, Charles Ogerau, and others vied to immortalize her image. There was even a wax effigy made of her in 1895 by sculptor Leopold Bernstamm, which was displayed in the Grevin Museum.
Early in her career, in 1896, when Cléo was just 22, King Léopold II of Belgium became entranced by her performance in a ballet. Léopold, then 61 years of age, already had two children by a woman rumored to be a prostitute and his pursuit of Cléo was enough to damage her reputation. Cléo, and her mother, who traveled with her, rejected the allegations. In an October 5th, 1897 interview with the New York Times, her mother, Mme. Mérode, insisted that although Cléo had been required to meet with the king, she did so only with her mother's chaperonage. Cléo herself said, "It Is horrible - horrible - that they should so pursue me with such monstrous lies! The King of the Belgians is no more to me than any other great man who has admired me on the stage, whom I have seen for a few moments off the stage very rarely, and always in the presence of many other persons."
Cléo may have been chaste, but she knew the worth of her beauty and charm as she rose to international stardom. A month prior to the Times interview, she was interviewed for a September 24th piece in the Delphos, Ohio Daily Herald. The interviewer enthused about her charms before sharing her comments:
For some months New York has been anticipating the arrival of Cleo de Merode, the Parisian dancer, the fame of whose wonderful beauty is now worldwide. And not only New York, but the whole country has felt more than common interest in the arrival on these shores of this odd young woman who has done nothing but dance and yet has turned the heads of monarchs, and at whose feet have been showered jewels and gifts that in the aggregate are worth an immense fortune.
Now that she has come to America, the interest in her attractive personality amounts to a continuous furore. Indeed Cleo de Merode is charming. Lithe and elegant, in an ecru gown embroidered in openwork over white silk, beautiful enough to dispense with wit, she replied to a thousand questions asked her by her many admirers as naturally as if she were witty enough to dispense with beauty. Her hazel eyes reflected a world. Her delicate features, animated by the excitement of her arrival, harmonized admirably with her rich, silky hair, dark with tints of red, and dressed in two wavy bands over her ears. Her black eyebrows commanded. Her smile was sweet, and what a spectacle it was when she lowered her eyelids and let one admire in their length her immeasurable brown lashes!
"I dance the ancient dances," she said, "the Louis XIII, the Louis XV, the gavot, the pavan, the minuet, and I led at Royan Louis Ganne's ballet of 'Phryne.' I am gowned by a real dressmaker. I know music very well, and play the piano as little as possible. I know how to arrange a basket of fruit, place flowers in a jardiniere and touch a book without spoiling it. I have read the poets and the historians, and I do not write. I wear stockings that are as fine as a woven mist. What other accomplishments shall I speak of?"
Although she pretended to make little of her famed beauty, saying she had, "a style of face conventional enough to have pleased a great number of people," Cléo de Mérode made effective use of it, comparing herself to the subject of da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Jaconda). Clearly, as a consummate performer, she knew that her audience required a level of audacity that few women of the time expressed.
Do you see the resemblance? It is most pronounced in figure 14, but we think Cléo's beauty was even greater than that of da Vinci's model.
Although Cléo was an elite ballerina dancing in a time when there was a firm separation between those who danced on the ballet stage and those who danced in the less respectable Parisian dance halls, in 1901, while at the peak of her career, Cléo, in a brilliant career move, performed at the Folies Bergère. This was a bold move for a ballerina with a serious career, yet her performance was such that she gained an even greater following. It was through such brilliant publicity moves, along with her ability as a dancer, that Cléo was able to maintain her position as one of Paris' most successful dancers, stretching her career into her 50s before finally retiring from the stage.
Despite her statement in 1897 that she did not write, Cléo would, in 1955, publish her autobiography, Le Ballet de ma vie (The Dance of My Life). When she died in 1966 at the age of 96, Cléo de Mérode was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris alongside her mother. A statue of her, depicting her in mourning for her mother, now decorates the headstone the two woman share.
One aspect of La Belle Époque, not just in France either, was a very palpable embrace of antiquity, and though often in a rather naive fashion by today's standards, one gets the sense that people were turning away from the onslaught of the industrial explosion and towards the real, and imagined, simplicity of earlier times. With this came a sense of the possibility of magic, and the ubiquity of images like this one, in which we wouldn't be terribly surprised to see faeries or woodland sprites cavorting about.
We love the way in which the magical is suggested in these images, without the introduction of a single truly fantastic element. These images make us feel much as we might when reading a fairy tale, that at any moment something truly marvelous will happen.
Nymphs, Naiads, Dryads, and Faerie folk so often cropped up in La Belle Époque. Found throughout the period from popular entertainment to commercial advertising, these images reflected a blossoming of Western occult experimentation and a yearning for magic, for myth made manifest. We've written before of our fondness for images depicting the Marvelous Maenad, which is not only a subgenre of the "Lovely Lady" category, but of fantasy postcards, as well.
Maenads could be seductive, inviting the viewer to join them in the Bacchanal, as in the previous image, but they could also be depicted as shy and elusive creatures of the wilderness, emerging from a tangle of vines, perhaps looking back with a mixture of amusement and discomfiture at a pursuer.
Even more interesting, we think, is the fact that this new medium, the picture postcard, made available to anyone with a penny or two the possibility of possessing such an image, one in which an obviously very real human being is pictured in a fairyland setting. We take photographs for granted today, of course, but think about it for just a moment—at the turn of the 20th century, this was all entirely new. Prior to this time, fantastic photo images of human beings were seldom accessible to the common man, woman or child, and we cannot take lightly the effect of "likeness" on the human psyche, and it's worth considering the effect this mass phenomenon had on society. Mass phenomenon, you wonder? Really? Absolutely. Just as an example, in the United States alone, "the official figures from the U.S. Post Office for their fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, cite 677,777,798 postcards mailed. At that time the total population of the United States was only 88,700,000!" (Thanks to emotionscards.com for their fascinating article that provided us with that factoid.)
Leopold Reutlinger, the Belle Époque photographer, took thousands of photographs of famous Parisian actresses. These were published in black and white, cropped to close up and republished, hand tinted, glittered, sequined, published again, and when every imaginable possibility had been explored, he superimposed these images onto wonderfully fantastic, often surreal backgrounds. The "Artiste with Bird" series is one of our favorites and quite collectible. As of this writing, we have two such images, both by Reutlinger and in unusually fine condition.
Can't you just imagine these lovely ladies as heroines in fairy tales, in which for their kindness they have been rewarded the ability to speak the language of the birds? Or, perhaps the bird in the picture is actually an enchanted prince, in need of saving by the brave young woman.
One of the issues with Reutlingers "fantaisies," is that although the artiste's name was usually printed on the face of the card in its early incarnations, by the time they got to these dramatic creations, the name would often be left off. This was fine at the time, since their faces were very well known, but not today. We've been able to identify the first of these two beauties as Marguerite Brezil, but the identity of the second remains a mystery and we would welcome any clues that might shed some light on this.
Every now and then, we come across someone who is able to share a new perspective on a subject of interest to our readers. Mayra Esquivel is such an individual. A student studying Fashion Design at Pima Community College, Mayra's interest in the fashion designers whose work adorned the fashionable women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has led to this biography of Jeanne Lanvin. We hope you enjoy Mayra's article as much as we have.
Jeanne Lanvin, Fashion Designer, 1867 – 1946 by Mayra Esquivel, Fashion Student, Pima Community College
Jeanne-Marie Lanvin was born in Brittany, France. She was the oldest of 11 children, since her family was really poor she didn’t have much education. When she turned 13, she was employed as an apprentice by a hat maker. Although she was spending more time cleaning the workshop and delivering the hats, she learned well how to make hats, so she started to make and sell dolls hats on her own in the toy stores of the neighborhood. In 1885, at the age of 18, with good business experience and enough savings she opened her own hat company. In the beginning it was difficult, but later on her business was successful, and she was able to expand and move to Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, where the company remains.
Jeanne Lanvin got married in 1896 and divorced in 1903. Born of this union was her only daughter, Marguerite. For Lanvin, being a single mother had a negative effect on her business. In 1907 she married a journalist, Xavier Melèt, but it was not a happy marriage; it was considered an arrangement of convenience. They remained married until 1953 when Melèt died.
Lanvin was the first to design children’s clothes. She designed for her daughter, using her as a model, and creating scaled-down versions of clothing for adults. Her hat clients loved her designs and the fact that mother and daughter could wear similar clothes. In 1909, Jeanne began making dresses for sale. She made no distinction between women’s and children’s wear; her designs were youthful, sophisticated, and featured exquisite handmade detail. The demand for her designs persuaded Jeanne to open a couture house selling mother-daughter garments and, thus, started her career as “Grand Couturier.” Since Marguerite was the unofficial model, as she was growing, Jeanne’s collections grew to target additional clients matching her daughter’s age.
Her designs were easy to recognize for her skilful use of embroidery, fine craftsmanship, and a particular shade of blue, “Lanvin Blue”. The inspirations in her embroidery patterns were influenced by other cultures: from the Middle East, the geometric shapes, vertical rows, and horizontal border patterns; from China, the traditional symbol of longevity. Her designs used silk, taffeta, velvet, silk chiffon, organza, lace, tulle, and included a lot of free-flowing ribbons, ruffles, flowers, and linked ornaments like appliqué, couching, quilting, parallel stitching, and her main touch, the embroidery. Her creations were considered ultra-feminine, with fitted bodices and long, full skirts. The “robe de style” was one of the well-known collections. Features often found in her designs included scooped-necks, drop waists, cap sleeves, or sleeveless bodices, and full skirts with volume at the hips. These designs were comfortable and classic, appropriate for all ages of women. In order to keep the “robe de style” interesting from season to season she updated her designs. In the mid-1920’s they were abundant, including double silhouettes, and three-quarter-length skirts. In the mid-1930’s they came full circle, with floor-length skirts. Even though Lanvin’s designs were not always contemporary, she was an advocate of modernity. She was a designer who didn’t drape or sketch her ideas, and her inspirations came from many art movements.
In 1926, Lanvin added a menswear division, becoming the first couturier that dressed whole families. For the men’s collection, Jeanne hired her nephew Yves and they succeed among ambassadors, members of the Academie Francaise, and aristocrats. Later she launched an interior-design branch, run by designer Armand-Albert Reteau. She created dozens of perfumes, but none of them were commercially successful until she designed Arpège. The perfume was introduced on the 30th birthday of her daughter and it became the most successful perfume. It had the house’s logo on the bottle: Jeanne in a flowing evening dress holding Marguerite’s hands.
The key of her successful career was that she knew her clientele. Jeanne Lanvin was one of the first
designers who created a true empire; her legacy has proven timeless and is one of the oldest surviving
couture houses. In 1946, Jeanne Lanvin died and her daughter, now known as Marie-Blanced, took over the company until 1958 when she died. Now Lanvin is headed by Alber Elbaz. Elbaz is not reinventing the House of Lanvin, he is following and developing the same environment Lanvin did. His sophisticated and delicate designs create a sublime silhouette suitable and flattering for various types of bodies. He is keeping the style of youth, femininity, and beauty, the same as Jeanne Lanvin’s.
Lanvin’s client list includes celebrities as Nicole Kidman, Kate Moss, Chloé Sevigny, Sofia Coppola, First Lady Michelle Obama, Queens of Italy, Roumania and English princesses House of Lanvin has numerous international locations, several in the United States. In 2011 three boutiques were opened in Moscow. They are traditional boutiques making clothes for both mothers and daughters, in honor of Jeanne Lanvin. Copyright 2013, Mayra Esquivel. Published with the permission of the author. All rights remain with the author.
