Digging Daura pt. 2: Van Doesburg and cinnamon toast, Xceron and banana ice-cream, Marcel-Lenoir and a murdered mistress, and late night metro rides

I’m long overdue for my second installment of this blog series. I’ve spent less time actively working in the Pierre Daura Archive the last few months than I would like. However, I’ve recently had cause to start “digging” through things again and have a small cache of treasures that I’ll be posting in increments over the next few months. I’ll be sharing more visually engaging items in future posts—I realize that an old letter isn’t the most attractive thing to look at—but one of the really great things about this archive is the insight it provides into the daily lives of artists in Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s. As I produce good translations of Pierre’s own writings, I will post them, but for starters, I thought I’d share some excerpts from his wife Louise’s letters, which she wrote in English to her family in Virginia, and are full of revealing anecdotes:

Saturday, September 6^th, I ended my letter saying we were expecting the Doesburgs for tea.[1] We waited all afternoon, and finally had tea by ourselves, and at 8:00 I started preparing dinner. Just as we were sitting down to the meal, the bell rang, and there were the Doesburgs, with Torres and Manolita.[2] It seems the Doesburgs had been “detained.” Pierre and I having eaten up nearly all the cakes, we had to scurry around and make cinnamon toast for them, which they found delicious, an unknown commodity in France. They were impressed with Pierre’s latest paintings, which are abstract, and insisted that he expose them in Holland. They are the ones responsible for the three expositions at Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam. They stayed until ten-thirty, the Torres remaining a little while after. And at last we were able to have supper. Mme. Doesburg is Catholic, her mother very rich. M. Doesburg is protestant, so they were simply married by the civil laws of France, as we were. Now the mother of Mme. Doesburg refuses to recognize that her daughter is married, and refuses to see her because of her immorality in living with a man not her husband in the sight of God.

Sunday we invited the Barbiers and Xceron to dinner.[3] The meal was a big success, in spite of the fact that Pierre, who wanted to buy the chops himself, to be sure of getting good ones, didn’t go down to get them until 1:00, when all the stores were closed. So we had to sacrifice our elegant ham. Pierre had invited Csaky, the sculptor who lives just across the street in buildings exactly like ours, to come up for ice-cream, and he arrived at the right moment.[4] The banana ice-cream was so good that I had a hard time urging people to take third helpings, as I could have polished it all off singlehanded. As we were having coffee in the studio, Torres came up, and we discussed art and artists, principally the latter. . . One incredible story was of Lenoir, the great painter of religious scenes, and frescoes in cathedrals.[5] One day a merchant was coming to see him, to consider giving him a contract. In honor of that occasion, his mistress tried to make him wash his feet. He refused. She insisted, and finally, enraged, he shot her.

…

Friday evening, when we went down to see the Torres, Torres told us with joy that he had found the definitive formula for his paintings. Really, the last painting that he had done was the culmination of his latest manner, a triumph. It was in striking contrast to the photos that Mme. Torres showed me of their home, which they sold to go to New York. Torres had designed it himself. It was like a Greek temple, the pediment frescoed with monumental figures. Inside all the walls were frescoed, the figures classic but stamped with his own personality. When they sold the house, the brutes who bought it thought the figures immoral, because there were one or two nudes, and papered over every wall.

…

Monday we had planned not to go to the Doesburgs, but when two “low companions” of Pierre’s breezed in for supper, we at once decided that we had promised faithfully to be there at nine thirty… As soon as we had finished supper, we expressed our regrets that we were expected at the Doesburgs, and we all left together.

The Doesburgs have a picturesque old studio at the other end of Paris… Doesburg does paintings entirely abstract and very good. His wife, a musician, also does abstract paintings, a little influenced by her husband. Once Doesburg exposed a large painting “The Card Players,” remarkably studied and abstract. The other artists in the salon were so outraged, that they all got together, sneaked in hammers, and tried to massacre it.

We stayed so late that we had to run to catch the last metro, arriving home at 1:30. The idea in Paris is that if anyone goes home before the last metro, it is because they are bored and don’t like the company. I almost fall asleep everywhere I go, and paw the air to leave at the respectable hour of 11:00.

(Louis Blair Daura, letter to her family, Sept. 17, 1929, Pierre Daura Archive, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia)

Next week, I’ll post some more excerpts from Louise’s letters describing an encounter with Dadaist Hans Arp, and another written after a visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio.

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[1] Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931), De Stijl painter and designer.

[2] Joachín Torres-Garcia (Uruguayan, 1874-1949), painter and sculptor, cofounder of Cercle et Carré in Paris and founder of Constructive Universalism in Latin America.

[3] Jean Xceron (Greek/American, 1890-1967), abstract painter. Barbier may be the illustrator George Barbier (French, 1882-1932), or more likely, either the painter André Barbier (French, 1883-1970) or the painter Fernand Jean Barbier (French, 20^th c., exact dates unknown), but I’m still working on that. If you’re interested, write a comment saying so and I’ll let you know what I find out.

[4] Joseph Csaky (French, 1888-1971), abstract painter.

[5] Jules Marcel-Lenoir (French, 1872-1931), Symbolist painter.