Searching for Jeanne Hébuterne

Missing Person in Montparnasse

An elusive figure inhabits the sundrenched rooms of Modigliani's Montparnasse studio in Rue de la Grande Chaumiere. 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 Hebuterne, Modigliani's companion and the mother of his daughter, Jeanne/ Giovanna Modigliani.

My novel, Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne, deals with the life of Modigliani’s muse, model, companion. Jeanne was a young art student who frequented the art academy where Modigliani sometimes dropped by to sketch models on cold winter days. After falling in love with Modigliani, Jeanne defied her parents by partly moving in with Modì — though not altogether. In the first year of their relationship, she would return home at dinnertime to resume her good girl pretenses. Her mother and father didn’t realize how far Jeanne had drifted away from them until she became pregnant - after which, she moved permanently to Modigliani’s studio in Rue de la Grande Chaumiere. In those months of their life together, she bloomed as a woman, and especially as an artist. She also had the sad task of sketching her godlike husband on his deathbed when he became ill with tubercular meningitis in January 1920.

I first encountered the art work of Jeanne Hébuterne at an exhibition in 2000, in Venice, curated by Christian Parisot at the Fondazione San Giorgio: Modigliani ed I Suoi. It was the first time Jeanne’s artwork was publicly displayed. After her death in 1920, the Hebuterne family collected Jeanne’s work from the studio, and locked it away from public view. Her brother, the artist André Hebuterne, was so distressed by Jeanne’s suicide, he could not bear to be reminded of her association with Modigliani. He also rejected Jeanne’s daughter, Jeanne/Giovanna Modigliani, who was raised by Modigliani’s sister in Italy. When she came of age, Jeanne Modigliani sought contact with the Hebuternes to have access to her mother’s artwork and mementos. It was a long battle which finally ended after her own death — and the death of her uncle, Andre Hebuterne whose heirs agreed to release artworks and other memorabilia belonging to Jeanne Hébuterne.

Jeanne Hébuterne, self portrait

For some, it may seem harsh that André refused all requests to view his sister’s artwork. Aside from dealing with his own pain — however — by locking it away, he preserved it for posterity. The sketches and paintings of a young, unknown, female artist would surely have gone missing in later years. Such was the fate of the artworks by Victorine Meurent— Manet’s model for Olympia, who was also a gifted painter, and whose works have virtually vanished.

At the Venice exhibition, several pages of Jeanne’s sketchbook, property of the Hebuterne heirs, were displayed, along with three or four paintings.   Overall, her works showed her transformation from a talented schoolgirl, depicting cozy family settings  -- to an artist meticulously documenting her life in Paris  and a woman celebrating her own body with sensuous nudes (some of which were self-portraits).

I was blown away by her beauty,  talent, and by the story of her tragic love affair with Modigliani: her companion, mentor, and god.  Thus began my fascination – perhaps obsession—with Jeanne Hébuterne. I began researching her life and work, and reported my findings in an essay: The Case of Jeanne Hébuterne: Missing Person in Montparnasse –published in the Literary Review in 2002 and nominated for a Pushcart prize.

Researching Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne is a bit like tracing a labyrinth – it can lead you into some strange loops & entanglements. The more I read and researched, the more complex her story became. In addition to attending exhibitions, studying art catalogues and on line auction sites, reading through thousands of pages of memoirs, art criticism, biographies, autobiographies, and interviewing Parisot through emails and in person — I explored avenues in the real world as well: retracing Jeanne & Modi’s steps around Paris.

One cold, bright winter day I found myself standing outside the blue door to number 8 Rue de la Grande Chaumiere, where Modigliani had his studio in the last few years of his life.  Peering in through the arabesque iron grille decorating the window, I glimpsed a dusty stairway spiraling up, illuminated by a ray of sunshine. That staircase is iconic in the myth of Modi & Jeanne.  

In her last days, Jeanne had to trudge up and down those steps, nine months pregnant, to fetch water from a fountain in the courtyard as there was no running water in their studio. Down those steps Modigliani was carried by his neighbor Ortiz, and bundled into a taxi which would take him to the Charity Hospital where he died. Up those steps, Jeanne’s own body was transported in a wheelbarrow by a street sweeper , on orders from the Hébuterne family after she had fallen backwards through the window of her childhood home.

Writer Violet Paget, aka Vernon Lee, believed that we leave bits of ourselves in the places we have lived, energies which “warm” the atmosphere for those who come after us. Visitors  following in our footsteps can sense the presence of those energies in certain places, which stir our emotions.  For me this has very much to do with the concept of soul of place – ( to which I have devoted an entire book)

 As I gazed in, I did not feel it was a tragic place at all.  I knew in my bones that the life Jeanne & Modi had led there together had many rich moments of creativity, contentment and joy.

 I snapped a picture with my iphone,  then continued on my walk.  Later,  scrolling through my pictures, I was astonished by what I found.  In the photograph I took of the studio,  you could see amid dust motes swirling in sunshine and shadows a ghostly presence taking shape.  The door in the back leading out to the courtyard glowed, almost pulsed, with a misty light – as if it opened into the afterlife.

That picture, that moment, that emotion I had felt looking in from the street was the germ of my cross-genre novel Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hebuterne, part of which is narrated by Jeanne’s ghost. Kirkus describes my novel as "Brilliantly researched, imaginative, cross-genre historical fiction."

It’s not only the story of Jeanne, told by her ghost - in part 1 — and by a diary that surfaces fifty years later — but also the story of how her artwork survived.

Loving Modigliani recently won the Indie Author Project Award in the Historical Fiction prize — and now will have a chance to be distributed as an ebook throughout major libraries in the US & Canada. You’ll already find it on Hoopla, Libby, & Overdrive, as well as in bookstores everywhere —available through Ingram & Amazon.

Universal Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/LovingModigliani

A short reading is available as a podcast on my previous podcast.