Office & Reading room - La Villa du temps retrouvé

Louise BRESLAU (1856-1927)
Portrait d’Henry Davison
1880, Oil on canva
Paris, Musée d’Orsay

Louise BRESLAU • Portrait d’Henry Davison

Louise Catherine Breslau was one of the most important women painters of Belle Époque Paris. A close friend of Madeleine Lemaire and Winaretta Singer, she shared many acquaintances with Proust. A German naturalised in Switzerland, Breslau began her artistic career in France, where her successes earned her the distinction of being the first foreign artist to receive the Légion d'honneur. This painting depicts Henry Davison (1859-1947), a poet and journalist who was the son of the Franco-British pianist Arabella Goddard and the journalist James William Davison. In 1912, Henry Davison published a remarkable essay: Music during the Victorian era. From Mendelssohn to Wagner.

Jacques-Émile BLANCHE (1861-1942)
Le groupe des Six
1922, Oil on canva
Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Jacques-Émile BLANCHE • Le groupe des Six

The ‘Group of Six’ was a musical collective of six composers formed in 1916 on the initiative of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, Louis Durey, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honegger promised to renew French music by simplifying it, particularly through the influence of jazz. They wrote two pieces, 'L'album des Six' and 'Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel', to a libretto by Cocteau (standing right). Durey does not appear in this performance by Blanche, but the pianist Marcelle Meyer is in the centre. The band of avant-garde friends, whom Proust applauded, met on Saturdays with their friends Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and Paul Morand.

Félix DESGRANGES (1860-1942)
Bourdelle assis dans son atelier
1914, Oil on canva
Paris, Musée Bourdelle

Félix DESGRANGES • Bourdelle assis dans son atelier

In this painting, presented at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1914, the great sculptor Antoine Bourdelle appears to be enthroned, dressed in his iconic blue velvet suit. The artist's figure stands out against the whiteness of the plaster sculptures. Seated in profile, he is surrounded by two key works, emblematic of his formal synthesis: fragments of the bas-reliefs for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Apollon et sa Méditation et une Muse, (1911-1913), and Apollon au combat (1900-1909), seminal works that mark Bourdelle's formal break with Rodin. The golden green colour of Apollon corresponds to the patina of the bronze published by Rudier.

Marie LAURENCIN (1883-1956)
Jeunes filles dans un jardin
Undated, Oil on canva
Ville de Deauville, Les Franciscaines

Marie LAURENCIN • Jeunes filles dans un jardin

Marie Laurencin was closely associated with the circle of avant-garde artists (from Picasso to Braque) and with Guillaume Apollinaire, with whom she had a romantic relationship. Her delicate, poetic paintings, predominantly in pastel tones, lend a dreamlike, intimate atmosphere to her work. She mainly depicted female figures, often idealised, rather solitary, in simplified contexts, a kind of almost fantastic nimbus that marked the modernity of her style. A painter and poet, Laurencin was also a liberated, bisexual and feminist woman. A companion of the early Dada movement, she also designed sets for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Blanche HOSCHÉDÉ-MONET (1865-1947)
Pivoines
1931, Oil on canva
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
En dépôt, Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Blanche HOSCHÉDÉ-MONET • Pivoines

Daughter-in-law and disciple of Claude Monet, Blanche Hoschédé-Monet shared the life of the father of Impressionism, living in Vétheuil with her mother Alice (Monet's second wife) from 1878. She then married Jean Monet, the painter's son from her first marriage, in 1897. On his death in 1914, Blanche returned to live with Claude in Giverny. Blanche Hoschédé-Monet's painting was shaped and influenced by Monet's Impressionism: ‘Look at nature and paint what you see, as best you can’, he advised her. From her master, the artist retained the impasto, the juxtaposition of colours and their contrast. Sunny gardens and bunches of flowers punctuate this painting of everyday life.

Monarch Typewriter
circa 1911
Ville de Cabourg Collection

Monarch Typewriter

In the summer of 1911, during a long stay in Cabourg, Marcel Proust asked the shorthand typist at the Grand Hôtel to type up part of his novel. Coecilia Hayward, of English origin, worked on her typewriter for the writer during the summer in Cabourg and then in the fall in Paris, under the supervision of his secretary Albert Nahmias - whose family owned a house in Cabourg. Then, the writer multiplies endlessly the corrections on his typescript, as on his manuscripts.

Camille de Morlhon (1869-1952)
La Broyeuse de cœurs, 1913
Pathé frères
Gaumont Pathé Archives

Oval frame

Pierre de Brézeux (Pierre Magnier) has everything he needs to be happy. Rich, kind, gifted with an iron health, he is engaged to a charming young girl, Marthe (Clémence Liceney) whom he adores and of whom he is deeply in love. This happiness, alas! was to be destroyed by the meeting of a woman who was to turn his life upside down. It is during a rehearsal organized at the royal circle that Pierre, as a member of the festival committee, meets for the first time Ida Bianca (Léontine Massart), famous for her flamboyant dance...