Symbolism is the practice of giving special meaning to objects, things, relationships or events. It became an artistic and poetic movement or style using symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical ideas, emotions and states of mind.

It originated in late 19th-century France and Belgium, with important figures including among others the Polish intellectual Téodor de Wyzewa who was a leading exponent of the Polish origin of the symbolist movement in France with France’s own Edouard Dujardin.

Téodor de Wyzewa was one of the great intellectual minds of the late 19th century. He is credited as one of the pioneers of the symbolist movement which became popular in France at that time.

His relationship with Jane Avril is well documented in the biography section of this website and Jose Shercliff’s book “Jane Avril of the Moulin Rouge.”

Certainly, it seems to be the classic tale of unrequited love as although Téodor was deeply in love with Jane it seems she saw him as a close and devoted friend (we’ve all been there I’m sure).

The book by Elga Liverman Duval titled “Téodor de Wyzewa – Critic Without a Country,“ from 1961 sheds a little more light on this one sided relationship.

Here are the important extracts:

When dancer Jane Avril met Téodor de Wyzewa, she was not only a well known dancer, but her beauty had made her the darling of poets and painters. With her frail loveliness and strange other-worldly quality, she fitted perfectly into the symbolist vision of the world. Not only was Jane beautiful, but her passion for art, music and poetry was genuine. In spite of a cruel, brutal childhood she remained a dreamer.

She borrowed books and read omnivorously, she listened to Banville, Villiers, Paul Fort, Verlaine and Oscar Wilde in the cafes. She met Wyzewa at the Thursday festivities at the Bal Bullier, a popular dancing rendezvous with a rather shady reputation.

Miss Shercliff (Jane Avril’s biographer) says that in the simplicity of her art and her love of life Jane Avril would often as not prefer the poor and affectionate to the rich and proud. Wyzewa was indeed very poor when they first met.

From the beginning, Wyzewa had a tremendous influence not only on Jane’s intellectual development, but on her whole outlook on life. It is an interesting sidelight that Jane Avril, who was considered one of the best dressed women of her day, when tight lacing was believed to be essential, refused to wear a whalebone corset. Strange echo of Doctor Wyzewa’s ideas.

According to Jane, Wyzewa fell madly in love with her and continuously proposed marriage which she refused. She was his mistress for a short time, although they lived together platonically for many months. In his journal 17 years later, Wyzewa said he never loved Jane and had only wasted his time and money on her, but could not resist recalling how she had spurned his love and rebuffed any attempts at affection.

Jane was actually really fond of Wyzewa. Yet, according to a confidence made to Miss Shercliff, she never considered marriage with Wyzewa because he was an inadequate lover. In his relationship with Jane, Wyzewa revealed his characteristic traits, possessiveness and lack of respect for himself. In spite of repeated infidelities on Jane’s part he begged her to continue living with him if only on the basis of friendship. Wyzewa was thus relegated to the humiliating role of playing guardian angel to the woman he loved, rescuing her from her own follies. In time, when Wyzewa grew more prosperous, he was unstinting in his generosity, and when Jane became ill he cared for her as if she were a child. She had every reason to write of him in a most appreciative way which she did.

When Wyzewa met Renoir, with whom he had a life-long friendship, he asked the painter to do a portrait of Jane Avril. This charcoal portrait remained in Wyzewa’s possession until his death, when it was sold for his estate. The girl Wyzewa married had a striking physical resemblance to Jane Avril, and everything points to his having been very much in love with her in spite of what he wrote in his journal to the contrary. In his first autobiographical novel, Valbert, he devotes a chapter to “la petite Marie” in whom if one knows the details, Jane Avril can easily be recognised. At first Valbert hates Marie for rebuffing his amorous advances and sends her away, but later he idealises her beyond recognition and reserves the harsh words for his own inadequacies and shortcomings.

There are then the sum of the portraits left of the young Wyzewa. On the whole, the opinions of many of his literary contemporaries are not favourable. And yet what a graceful portrait Mallarmé has left of him! Jules Laforgue whom Wyzewa had only met the year before in Germany liked and trusted him enough to leave him all his manuscripts. A ravishing beauty of the day speaks of having the strangest and most beautiful friendship with a tender, affectionate and modest man with the soul of a saint. Who then is the real Wyzewa? He was, no doubt, a composite of all the different personalities described. Isabelle de Wyzewa recalls that her father could have the greatest charm, if he felt so inclined, but that he was equally capable of great irony and arrogance. Many of the quotations of Wyzewa’s contemporaries in this study coincide with her opinion. He seems to have been a strange mixture of contrasts and contradictions. His mind could send out a shower of brilliant sparks, but his soul – that of a man essentially unsure of himself – he was often thwarted and distorted. This is more than evident in his relationship with Jane Avril.

Wyzewa called himself a Slav and later told his daughter that his Slavic nature, so many-faceted, explains why his contemporaries really never understood him. It seems more likely that Wyzewa alienated people because of his irony and arrogance.

The strange thing about Wyzewa is that he was to go through many intellectual changes, even a religious crisis in his later years. However, the complex impression we have of his character as a young man remain the same.

So there it is, as clear an understanding as I can find that explains the somewhat one sided relationship but genuine friendship that existed between Jane Avril and Téodor de Wyzewa.

Craig

After a little digging I've managed to locate a review for Man of Montmartre by Stephen and Ethel Longstreet. The review dates back to 1958 and was written by book editor Jane E. Huckvale for a publication known as The Herald.

After concluding this account of the life, loves and alcoholism of one of the greatest French artist of this century who died only a little over 3 years ago, I cannot help but feel that the Longstreets have allowed their imaginations to become a little highly coloured. Surely no man who lived to be 72 could be drunk or partially so for 64 years. It is alleged that Maurice commenced his excessive drinking at about the age of eight and by the time he was 10 years old he was a problem drinker. He remained so until his death in 1955.

Well, be that as it may, Utrillo was one of the greatest painters of his age and the Longstreets knew him and his mother in the early 20s when they were beginning to be famous around the streets of Montmartre for their unorthodox way of living - spectacular even in that milieu where social behaviour was always on a low moral plane.

Utrillo's mother, the natural daughter of an unnamed father, eventually became famous as a painter in her own right. Her name was Suzanne Valadon and the book starts in spectacular fashion with Maurice birth under the most sordid conditions. At that time his mother was earning a meagre living scrubbing floors and occasional posing for the poverty stricken artists of Montmartre. The book implies that Maurice was the illegitimate son of Renoir for whom Suzanne often posed in the nude or partially clothed as required. Whether the implication is true is not established and the reasons for Suzanne's silence on the subject are not very satisfying.

While Maurice was growing up in the mean little room where Suzanne lived with her old mother, his only acknowledged parent was leading a Bohemian life, an amoral existence which led from one excess to another. But she did love her son and she took him with her often in the sidewalk cafes, the smoky gin filled bars, the rendezvous which she frequented. There he met many of the famous painters of the age - the dope addict Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Degas, Renoir and a host of others.

But by the time he was 18, Utrillo (he was given the name by one of his mother's Spanish friends who paid fifty francs for the present and the official paper which went with it) - was a confirmed alcoholic and was placed in an institution for a short time. On his release he went back to his old ways and according to this account continued his wild excesses for the rest of his life. He was institutionalised several times; never cured.

But he had the spark of genius which unaccountably seems so often to go hand in hand with instability - and he could paint. Always his pictures were of Paris streets; always they evidenced, whether deliberately or unconsciously, I do not know, the isolation of man. In all of the Utrillos I have ever seen myself, the tiny figures of human beings are dwarfed by the architecture around them.

When Suzanne took as her lover Maurice's best friend Andre, a man 20 years her junior, the Utrillos commenced to make money. Andre was a salesman and he did his best to keep healthy the geese who only required his discipline to continue laying golden eggs. At least so Andre thought. But in the end they were both incorrigible and Andre finally left his aging mistress and her debauched son to themselves.

The novel ends with the death of Suzanne and the crazed Maurice turning again to his painting and his bottle; cold comfort for a partially deranged mind.

While the Longstreets have produced a most readable novel they have built it on very few bare bones trimmed with imaginative episodes. Their acquaintance with Suzanne Valadon is undoubtedly authentic but it is over 30 years ago that they knew her "when", more research might have produced a greater book. For instance constant reference is made to Utrillo "picking up his brush." Utrillo nearly always used a palette knife for his painting, applying colours like a mason working with cement to give his paintings a zestful yet ominous feel of reality.

Indeed, Utrillo's accomplishments as an artist here fade in to insignificance in comparison with his prodigious drinking. Utrillo was above all a painter of the first rank. Unfortunately, in this novel the Montmartre "character" comes first, the painting second. J.E.H

Not the most reassuring review I'm sure you'll agree. That said, I'm in agreement with the reviewer when she states it's "a most readable novel." It's in this context that I'm enjoying the book but it looks like I'll have to dig a little further to learn more about Maurice Utrillo and indeed his mother Suzanne Valadon.