Philippa Stockley on the new book by Ruth Butler
Hortense Fiquet, Camille Doncieux, Rose Beuret. Who are they? The wives of Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin.The third is the best known; the others have largely been omitted from history. Demonstrably, in Fiquet’s case. Cézanne’s first biographer, Georges Rivière, was Fiquet’s daughter-in-law’s father. Rivière wrote the biography while she was alive, yet did not mention her once.
Without the women that these three artists, born mid-19th century, took up with when young, whom they later married (Rodin in old age), many of the paintings or sculptures that made them famous could not have been created.
Rose Beuret acted as Rodin’s hands-on studio technician, as a curt, business-like letter from him proves, as well as model for, notably, ‘Genius of Liberty’, a bellicose flying figure done for La Défense. All three appear repeatedly in paintings.
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