Missing Person in Montparnasse:
The Case of Jeanne Hébuterne
(excerpts)

LINDA LAPPIN

An elusive figure inhabits the sundrenched rooms of Modigliani's Montparnasse studio in Rue de la Grande Chaumière. She sits quietly in a corner sketching, paces the corridor with a heavy step, waits at the window, looking down at skeletal trees in an empty courtyard. From Modigliani's many portraits of her, we recognize the otherworldly gaze, the coppery hair coiled like a geisha's, the unflattering hint of double chin: It is Jeanne Hébuterne, Modigliani's last mistress, only friend, and the mother of his daughter, Jeanne Modigliani.      Until October 2000, when her art work was featured at a major Modigliani exhibition in Venice at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, not much was known about Jeanne Hébuterne, except for the tragic story of her suicide in 1920. She was a promising young artist, fourteen years Modigliani's junior. She came from a conservative bourgeois background and was renounced by her family, devout Catholics, for her liaison with the painter, who in their eyes was nothing but a debauched derelict, and Jewish besides. Much too early in their love affair, Jeanne became pregnant with their first child. She was approaching the end of her second pregnancy when, destitute, abandoned by all but Jeanne, Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis on January 24, 1920.

     Aside from the sixty drawings and half-dozen paintings on display, the photographic documentation collected in the exhibition suggested other areas in which Jeanne experimented: clothing and jewelry design. For Jeanne Hébuterne, as for many other citizens of Montparnasse, life itself was art, and she sought total expression: in her work, in her self-presentation, in the clothes and jewelry she designed for herself, and in the unconventional life she freely chose as Modigliani's partner.
     Biographical information concerning Modigliani is drawn from two main sources. The first, not always reliable, consists of memoirs celebrating Montparnasse in this period. In testimonies such as those collected by Lawrence Golding in Artist's Quarter, Modigliani is inevitably drawn as a wild, half-drugged, tormented genius, an incorrigible alcoholic, a prodigious seducer of women, and a naked dancer in the street. Scanty record is given of Jeanne in these sensational hagiographies, for she was not popular in the bohemian circle. Some considered her “too proper” and out of place in Montparnasse: she was bourgeois. From all accounts, Jeanne Hébuterne was a reserved person with few friends, and when in the midst of Modigliani's acquaintances, tended to remain aloof. This gave some the impression that she was extremely passive, or just plain dull, and thus of no interest to anyone.
     The second source of information about Modigliani is his daughter's research into her parents' life through documents, letters, photo albums, and reminiscences gathered after overcoming enormous resistance on the part of both the Hébuterne and Modigliani families. In reconstructing Modigliani's life, Christian Parisot tends to discredit the first source, relying primarily on Jeanne Modigliani's findings, but adds a third source, previously inaccessible to Modigliani scholars, Mme.Céline-Georgette Hébuterne, widow of André.
     In an interview with Parisot appearing in the catalogue of the Venice Modigliani exhibition, Céline tries to rehabilitate Modigliani, claiming that his addiction to alcohol and the stories of drug use, documented by many sources, were only legends concocted by the envious. Céline, who as a young girl modeled for Modigliani, goes on to suggest that use of drugs and alcohol cannot possibly co-exist with the capacity to create great art. Parisot echoes this in emphasizing Modigliani's poor health and crushing sense of failure, rather than a long history of substance abuse, as the cause of the semi-madness into which he fell at the end of his life. In this picture, all tarnish from Modigliani's image has been removed for posterity.
     One biographer who might object to these airbrushed adjustments is the British novelist Patrice Chaplin, who in the eighties unearthed a correspondence between Jeanne and her friend Germaine Labaye, another aspiring young artist. Some of these letters would corroborate the darker side of Modigliani's personality, while portraying Jeanne as a spirited, sensual, and independent woman who may have experienced moments of deep melancholy, but had no regrets about the life she had chosen.
     Chaplin published her version of Jeanne's life in Into the Darkness Laughing, which is more a memoir about her own search for Jeanne than a proper biography. While researching in Paris, she also tracked down Céline Hébuterne who consented to a brief phone interview included in Chaplin's book. In no uncertain terms, Céline confirmed reports of Modigliani's alcoholism and added, “The Hébuterne family wanted nothing to do with him.” This version of the story blatantly contradicts statements Céline later made to Parisot during an interview, which are recorded in an essay printed in the catalogue of the Venice show.
     But this is only one of the many discrepancies you come across in trying to puzzle out the facts of Jeanne's life. Issues still to be clarified are: Was Jeanne merely a passing romantic episode for Modigliani or an intimate partner and work associate? Did they ever live together for any length of time? Did the Hébuternes really renounce their daughter and are they to blame for the tragedy? Other ambiguous questions concern the date and place of her suicide, the fate of her body after she fell through the window; and the reason why her artwork was concealed for so long from public knowledge. All this makes Jeanne Hébuterne a missing person framed in an empty window over Montparnasse.
     Early biographers, overly solicitous of Jeanne Modigliani's feelings, as she was now an orphan, cast Jeanne Hébuterne in the role of silent saint and sacrificial victim, while ignoring her artistic talents. Such an attitude infuriated her daughter who undertook her search in order to reclaim her maternal legacy as an artist. Other biographers simply stated that Modigliani had no truly deep attachments aside from his mother, Eugenia, that Jeanne was only one of many women, second to his model Lunia, or that he lived only for art.
     Modigliani himself may have contributed to this idea, for he did his best to keep Jeanne Hébuterne out of sight. In the early phase of their courtship, he took her round to the cafés, but after they began to work together, he would leave her at their studio while he went carousing. All this, out of respect, in what Modigliani himself defined to a friend as “the Italian way.” In public he treated her quite formally. His other mistresses had not received such genteel treatment. Modigliani had once hoisted his previous lover, Beatrice Hastings, through an unopened window during a knockdown fight.
     Sometimes after an evening out for a cheap dinner on credit at a friendly bistro, Modigliani would accompany Jeanne home to her parents, kiss her in the doorway, and send her up while he headed out for a night of serious discussions on art, and, doubtless, serious drinking. Some later criticized Jeanne for not making him give up drink, too tall an order, perhaps, for a twenty-year old girl. Stoically, she stood by him, no matter what. To those few who knew them well, there was no doubt he loved her deeply and that to her, he was a god. In his own way, he was committed to her, for although he fathered children by at least three other women, Jeanne's daughter was the only one he recognized as his own.
     If reticence and propriety have kept this woman wreathed in mystery, so has rivalry. Jeanne had an army of rivals in Montparnasse: many women, and also men, were in love with the handsome, passionate, madcap Italian. Modigliani—“Modì” to his friends, “Dedo” to his family, was a small man of sturdy build, mild features and probing eyes. Even in the most temporary living conditions, as when spending the nights on a bench in a square, he was fastidious about his appearance. He was often dressed in a natty brown corduroy suit, a red scarf knotted around his neck. Amedeo Modigliani was no dropout, but a man of breeding and culture with a solid background in the history of Italian painting, which he had studied at the academies of Florence and Venice. Indeed, his work is generally interpreted as a renovation of the classic tradition of the Italian masters rather than a break with it. Cocteau has described him as a true aristocrat of the soul: “He was always proud and rich, when we knew him; rich in the real sense.” He had a ringing childlike laugh which, as he grew embittered towards the end, could chill you to the core. When sober, he was a man of great finesse and irresistible charm. Several women later claimed to have been Modigliani's one true love, like Lunia Czechowska, a Polish girl who modeled for some of his better known portraits. Lunia hardly mentions Jeanne in her memoirs, although she insisted her own relationship with Modigliani was purely spiritual and that she was never infatuated with him. Perhaps her pride caused her to make such a statement, as it was clear to all Modigliani had chosen Jeanne Hébuterne to share his life, for better or for worse, and indeed “worse” it turned out to be for both of them.
     The tragic story of Jeanne and Amedeo might have been copied from the libretto of a nineteenth-century melodrama, though some of the darker—and even squalid details—the sheets stained with sardine oil while he lay dying, as the only thing they had to eat in the studio were tinned sardines—resist such sentimental treatment, and may be apocryphal. But flashing back to when it began, we cannot but relish the scene.
     Paris was in transition from the belle époque to the années folles, which unfolded against the backdrop of the First World War. In 1914, the City of Light was still wild and free despite the curfews, the rationing, the empty hotels, the black-bordered telegrams. Although many artists and intellectuals were called into service, the foreigners remained in Montparnasse, like Picasso and Juan Gris. Modigliani had been declared physically unfit for military service. At first, no one really took the war seriously or believed it could last long. If anything, the war reports whetted the hedonism of those left behind. Long goodbye parties were held in Montparnasse for the men going off to fight and the remaining artists stuck together to keep their spirits up. These were hard times for Modigliani, as he regularly received an allowance from his family in Livorno, but the war held up the postal service from Italy, so he was often without funds. Still, even the poorest managed to scrape by on a few sous. As Cocteau has said, poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse, although by 1914 absinthe was banned, the cafés closed at 8 p. m. and women did not go about the streets at night. Yet, there were parties and readings.
     Into this world of café life and make-shift studios Jeanne Hébuterne had come as early as 1913, at the age of fifteen, following her brother André, who had, to his parents' dismay, decided to become a painter. Monsieur Hébuterne worked in the perfume department of the Bon Marché. His wife was a modest housewife and fervent Catholic. They had envisioned quite other lives for their children, but did not oppose either André or Jeanne in their choice of studies. They were convinced Jeanne's wish to become an artist was only an adolescent whim. Jeanne enrolled first at a school of decorative arts, and then at the Colarossi Academy, where she studied life-drawing. This itself was an achievement. Women painters were still an exception, even in Paris. Marie Laurencin and Susan Valadon were two of the artists Jeanne hoped to emulate by studying painting. She may have caught her first glimpse of Modigliani here at the academy, for many painters in Montparnasse attended the life-drawing sessions to have cheap access to models, especially in the winter, for the academy was heated.
     After class, she would stop off at the Café de la Rotonde, have a drink and chat with friends, including the dapper Japanese painter Foujita, who was genuinely interested in her work, and with whom she may have had a fleeting affair. Most certainly she noted Modigliani at the Rotonde, where he could frequently be seen drinking with Utrillo or Soutine, discussing art with Picasso and Kisling, or even quarreling with Beatrice Hastings. He would have been hard to miss, with his red scarf and corduroy suit, wandering from table to table “like a fortune teller,” says Apollinaire, and sketching portraits for a mere five francs, the equivalent of a taxi fare of medium distance.
     Or she could have met him on Boulevard Raspail, where, it has been reported, Modigliani danced daily in front of the statue of Balzac. Or maybe she saw him roaming the streets, his jacket pockets stuffed with pages torn from Lautréamont, reciting Dante or Baudelaire at the top of his voice. Wherever she spotted him, in 1915, Jeanne wrote to Germaine that she had “seen someone around” who was just her type, but they did not meet until 1916, when they were introduced by the Russian sculptor, Chana Orloff, during the artists' carnival.
     Jeanne later wrote that it was as if they had always known each other, and that they were alike in so many subtle ways. For Modigliani, it must have been an electrifying frisson of recognition or perhaps, the answer to a prayer. She was his idealized feminine incarnate: petite, plump, sensual, with a long slender neck, oval face, alabaster skin. The contrast between her pale complexion and dark reddish hair had earned her the nickname of Coconut. But perhaps it was the eyes that struck him most, slanted, almond eyes of an undefinable shade: mingling green, blue, hazel, one iris floating slightly off center, giving her a peculiarly abstracted expression. Some thought her beautiful; others thought her strange-looking. Like many young girls she was moody, dreamy, intuitive; she was also very precocious, and had a rebellious streak. Still, Modigliani did not rush her off to bed, or even invite her to pose for him---the two things often went together. Perhaps her tender age kept him at bay: she was only eighteen and he was almost thirty-two. In any case, he was living at the time with a demanding older woman, Beatrice Hastings.
     Hastings had come to Paris after dumping Alfred Richard Orage, editor of the New Age, close friend and mentor of Katherine Mansfield. As Modigliani's many portraits show us, Beatrice was a striking woman, high breasted and high cheek-boned, with a vixen gleam in her blue eyes. She has been described as hysterical, eccentric, and an alcoholic. Of independent means, she owned a house in Montmartre and a flat in Montparnasse, where Modigliani lived with her from 1914 to 1916. They were a volcanic pair and well- matched drinking partners. Hastings was pathologically jealous—whenever she caught him at a café with another woman, she was likely to throw fits, pull out a gun, or launch a bottle, and Modì did not hesitate to reply in kind. The gentle Jeanne must have offered him other consolations, although she always feared he might still be attracted to that sort of wildness in other women.
     Jeanne's affair with Modigliani began when he asked her to model for him in spring 1917 at the hotel where he was now lodged, for he had escaped from Beatrice. After sitting for the first of many portraits, she allowed herself to be seduced. She later wrote to Germaine that the experience “was not without a certain horror,” and afterwards had to sew her underwear back up before going home. Despite the horror, she returned time and again to that room with the shutters closed above the street. By early summer, they were an established couple. In the mornings she attended her drawing lessons, in the afternoons, she joined Modigliani in his tawdry hotel, then went home to her family in the evenings. Jeanne was only nineteen. It was her first real experience with a man. Her brother and her friends knew, but kept silent. André did not approve. Eventually her parents discovered the affair. Jeanne's mother insisted she break it off, but the girl was adamant.
     Patrice Chaplin reports that at this time Jeanne's family forced her to choose between the safety of her home and her illicit affair. In choosing poverty and passion, she willingly deprived herself of her family's financial support at a time when food was scarce and life uncertain. This may be a romanticized view, for, as we now know from Parisot's Venice show, Jeanne's artwork dating from this period includes a number of family portraits in domestic settings: several of her mother, brother, and grandparents—noticeably absent is the figure of her father, who may have been posted outside Paris at the time. This evidence suggests that she was often at her parents' home, where she made these sketches. Moreover, these pieces reveal her strong attachment to her family. More likely, Jeanne tried, if unsuccessfully, to bridge the gap between two opposed realities to which she knew she belonged. By day she worked with Modigliani—in the studios of friends, like Kisling and Foujita, or in hotel rooms, for as yet he had no real place of his own. In the evenings, she went home to sleep and tried to reassure her family that she could look out for herself.

[. . .}

     The events preceding Modigliani's death and Jeanne's suicide have the exaggerated proportions and dark luster of a romantic myth: the poet maudit on his final descent into madness and despair. Published accounts differ greatly on the most important points. Details have been added or erased by involved parties, perspectives changed over the years, to gloss over or free from blame.
     The following story cannot claim to be fact, too many contradictory versions have been recorded. It has been reconstructed mainly from Jeanne Modigliani and Patrice Chaplin's research. One evening in mid-January, after working on his portrait of Mario Varvogli, Modigliani told Jeanne he was going out for a walk. Jeanne could see he was ill and pleaded with him to stay home, but he would not listen. He was seen hours later, half-delirious, drinking at the Rotonde, where alarmed friends begged him to go home. Instead, he insisted on following them across Paris in the rain, getting soaked, dragging his coat behind him “like a slain animal” in the throes of hallucination. He stopped to shout insults at the statue of a lion in a square. His friends tried to reason with him, but received only abuse. At last, he collapsed in the doorway of a church, where a prostitute attempted to calm his raving. When he lost consciousness, he was taken home to Jeanne. A doctor was called in. He diagnosed a severe case of nephritis and left some medicine for the patient.
     Ortiz, the downstairs neighbor, was away. Jeanne was eight months pregnant. Getting down those stairs was quite an effort for her, but somehow she managed. She trod warily across the rain-slick courtyard, and called in at a café, where she entreated the waiter to send word to Zborowski. Zborowski later reported that he had influenza and could not respond to Jeanne's appeal. In fact, no one came to their aid at all for seven long days. There was no water to drink in the studio, only alcohol, and nothing to eat but tinned sardines. Modigliani alternated between feverish rages and flashes of lucidity in which he managed to complete his last painting, then fell back upon the bed, where the sheets were spotted with sardine oil. According to the legend, he cursed himself for filling up the world with pictures no one wanted.
     Meningitis set in, and his neck began to stiffen. Jeanne warmed him with her body, soothed his rages, and waited, wondering why no one came to help them. In her more anguished moments, while Modigliani slept, she drew sketches of her own suicide, a dagger through the heart. On the fifth day he woke and was suddenly himself again. Noticing a length of gold package string, he asked Jeanne to bring it to him. With the string he bound her wrists, then bound his own, and fastened their wrists together in a final loop. This was their wedding ceremony, its stark symbolism worthy of a Noh play. Through this ritual gesture, their union was sealed throughout eternity. So typical of Modigliani, the poetic, if histrionic touch. Later Jeanne drew a sketch of their hands bound together.
     On the seventh day, Ortiz found them and called an ambulance. Jeanne, in great agitation, did not want to be parted from Modigliani, but after seven days of near starvation was too weak to offer much resistance. Zborowski finally put in an appearance at the hospital when he realized Modigliani was gravely ill. As always, he took things in hand. Writing to Modigliani's family to break the bad news, he stated that he had been at Modigliani's bedside from the onset of his illness until the day before Ortiz returned, when he himself had become ill with influenza. This contradicts the testimonies of the concierge and of Ortiz. And indeed if Zborowski had been there for nearly the whole time, why had he not called an ambulance earlier? He assured them that everything possible had been done to save Modigliani.
     Jeanne was kept away from the hospital, for fear that the emotional strain might be too much for her. Hanka tried to put her in a maternity clinic, but she was refused admittance as she was not yet in labor. They found a room for her at a hotel near the hospital, where she slept with a razor under her pillow. Three days later, Modigliani died. Jeanne's father accompanied her to the hospital, and waited in the hallway as Jeanne approached the bed where her husband lay. She uttered a piercing cry of grief, then with slow ponderous steps, backed away from the bed, her eyes fixed on Modigliani's face.
     What happened next? The backwards motion away from the hospital bed is the only certain fact. Like a repetitive motif, that retreat continued as Jeanne withdrew from friends and family, from life itself, stumbling backwards out a window and toppling to her death. Different reports have been given of the end. Did she fall from a window in her parent's home? Or from the studio where she had lived with Modì? The official version reads that she was at home with the Hébuternes in their fifth-floor apartment in Rue Amyot. While keeping watch over her, André fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and Jeanne chose that moment to throw herself through the window at four o'clock in the morning. The Hébuternes' lips are sealed as to what followed.
     According to some sources, a workman found her body in the street and carried it up the stairs to her parents' apartment. For reasons unknown they would not allow her to be brought in. The workman took her body to Modigliani's studio, where the concierge also refused it, saying that Modigliani was no longer a tenant since he was dead, and anyway, still owed rent, so Jeanne's remains had no right to be there. He then carted her to the police station and asked what he should do with the poor woman's body. He was told to take her back to the studio, where she stayed until later in the day. Jeanne's brother André made the funeral arrangements.
     Modigliani was buried with regal pomp in the Père Lachaise cemetery. A huge crowd flocked behind the hearse. Jeanne was buried out in the anonymous suburbs. Her family tried to keep the funeral secret, but Zborowski found out about it. He and a handful of Modigliani's artist friends turned out for the ceremony at eight o'clock on a grey winter morning. When it was over, the two groups refused to shake hands with each other.
     Eight years later, through the perseverance of Modigliani's friends and relatives, Jeanne Hébuterne was reinterred beside Amedeo Modigliani in Père Lachaise. Today a single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads: “Struck down by Death at the moment of glory.” Hers reads: “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice.” Modigliani's art works skyrocketed in value the moment they put him under; Jeanne's few pieces were hidden away in a studio for eighty long years, doubtless many were lost. Yet some of her sketches slipped through this censure, and one of them, notably a portrait of Modigliani himself, was mistaken for his own work even by experts and forgers: so deft had she been at copying the hand of the artist she loved.
     What is the moral of this story? Who is to blame for the tragedy? It strikes us as so old-fashioned, so unnecessary nowadays, when hundreds of minor remedies might have been found to avoid it, not the least of which was more effective means of contraception. Jeanne herself was not old-fashioned; she was extremely modern in her yearnings for self-fulfillment. Like many young women nowadays, she wanted it all: a creative life, a passionate and intellectually stimulating partnership, motherhood, and family ties. But as yet, there was no place for Jeanne Hébuterne. Not in the world of bourgeois propriety; or among the bohemians of Montparnasse. Both camps disclaimed her.
     In 1919, both Jeanne and Modigliani painted portraits of each other and of themselves. Taken together these paintings offer a moving testimony to their relationship. Jeanne painted him in his brown corduroy suit, with a jaunty fedora, neat white shirt, and fashionable tie. The pallor of his face emerges from a somber brown background. He looks thinner than in his photographs. The head, at an angle, rests on one hand—a typical pose Modigliani himself used in his portraits. The eyes are soft, the sensual mouth set in a bemused half-smile as he stares dreamily out at his wife, the artist. In technique, this painting owes nothing to Modigliani. It represents Jeanne's own, autonomous vision and style.
     Of Modigliani's many portraits of Jeanne in this period, one shows Jeanne in a maternity shift. His tenderness for her is evident in the quizzical tilt of her head, the sightless green eyes and gentle smile, the graceful wrists with elongated fingers. With its soothing greens and blues, this portrait emanates a sense of deep intimacy and repose. True to the “Italian way,” he has exalted the chaste loveliness of motherhood. Nothing could be further from the vibrant carnality of the nudes, but she is no idealized Madonna. Here, too, we find the tawny luminous skin, and the sensual detail of reddish fuzz under her arms.
     The full feminine form, the pensive mood are absent in Jeanne's own self-portrait, in which she stands before a darkened easel, wearing a painter's smock, palette and brush in hand. The geometrical composition with its sharp triangles is quite removed from Modigliani's own style. Cropped hair frames a vulpine face, the slanted, aquamarine eyes, canny and suspicious, dart away from the viewer. There is an urgency in her expression: she is a woman working under pressure, about to perform an act of transgression. Wary of possible intrusions, she knows she may be discovered at any moment. Her hand seizes the brush with nervous vigor and determination, telling us much about how Jeanne Hébuterne saw herself and about her aspirations in the world. She was indeed an artist. The two portraits, one as mother, the other as painter, could not be more unalike. You would say they do not even depict the same person. We are prompted to ask what might have been the reconciling factor, the missing link between the two.
     Jeanne did not live long enough to mature as an artist. All we know of her are a few self-portraits and scraps of letters to a friend. She can hardly be considered a major figure of the period or a feminist icon, yet her brief life illustrates the enormous price paid by women of her time in order to live a complete life as wife, mother, muse, and artist—striving for a wholeness the world was not ready to concede.