Who could believe that the serene Orangerie museum hides a recent sulfurous history, made up of suspicious deaths, attempted murder and trials? No one.
During this rainy and windy month of November 2023, I take my 13-year-old son to see the exhibition dedicated to Modigliani in this museum that we know so well. I praise the talent of Modigliani, the very archetype of the cursed artist who died at 35, whom I loved so much when I was young but whom I had somewhat abandoned since then.
The theme of the exhibition, “Amedeo Modigliani. A painter and his art dealer”, highlights the relationship between the artist and his art dealer Paul Guillaume, whom he photographed and painted several times.
Well, what a disappointment. Few paintings are exhibited and the explanations offered on the walls by the museum are a tad dull (“an artist misunderstood, except by an esthete and avant-garde art dealer who supports him against all odds” could be the summary).
My son is as disappointed as me (“why do they all look stupid with their dead eyes?”) and to console ourselves, we go back to the ground floor of the museum to admire the Water Lilies by Monet who delight us every time.
Back home, I try to understand why Modigliani, whom I loved so much when I was 20, no longer appeals to me at all. As always, I do my research. From Wikipedia page to Wikipedia page via the Orangerie museum website and a few academic pages, I come across the history of the Orangerie museum and the Amedeo Modigliani – Paul Guillaume duo.
Beatrice Hastings – Amedeo Modigliani
The Irish beauty, in waistcoat and cameo – Amedeo Modigliani
Antonia – Amedeo Modigliani
Red head girl with necklace – Amedeo Modigliani
The Pink Blouse – Amedeo Modigliani
A third person – who is not mentioned in the exhibition – quickly seems to me to be of greater interest: Paul Guillaume’s wife, Domenica.
The “Jean Walter – Paul Guillaume” donation made by Domenica Guillaume is the art collection that we can admire today at the Orangerie museum (apart from the Water Lilies by Monet which have a completely different story).
And well, the story of this collection and this woman, which is recounted in Christine Clerc’s book “Domenica the devil”, is incredible. For those who don’t know, the Orangerie museum, which is the counterpart to the Jeu de Paume museum in the Tuileries gardens, is historically – as its name suggests – an orangery.
Transformed into a museum, the building hosted Monet’s marvelous Water Lilies on the ground floor in 1927 thanks to the tenacity of his friend Clémenceau – and the basement hosted the “Jean Walter – Paul Guillaume” collection in 1984, thanks this time to the tenacity of Malraux.
You may wonder who are these Paul Guillaume and Jean Walter who give their names to this collection.
They only have one thing in common, they married the same woman, some twenty years apart.
Let’s start with Paul Guillaume, Modigliani’s art dealer. Born in 1891 in a modest background, he starts out as a car salesman when he discovers by chance what was not yet called in France “negro art” at the time.
He displays a statuette discovered in a shipment of tires in the window of the dealership for which he works. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who passes by and is already interested in primitive arts, falls in love with the statuette. The two men will link, under the guise of a friendship, a very interested professional relationship which will allow the car salesman to become an expert in primitive art and to introduce himself as an art dealer into the Parisian artistic community, and to the penniless poet Apollinaire to secretly trade in art thanks to a frontman.
Paul Guillaume by Amedeo Modigliani
Paul Guillaume will capitalize a lot on this relationship, in which he will often – and wrongly – treat as equals with the poet.
He will also capitalize a lot on WWI, as he stays in Paris due to incapacity unlike his fellow art dealers who involuntarily leave him free space in Paris. He signs many artists whom he has coveted for a long time.
He opens his first gallery in 1914 where Derain, Van Dongen, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani and Chirico are exhibited. However, the era of the art dealer who pampers, feeds and houses his artist is over: Paul Guillaume is not a Paul Rosenberg. He is a trader, despite his desire to be seen as a creative artist, and a trader who expects a fat return on investment.
Paul Guillaume by Amedeo Modigliani
Over the years, he has also built up a personal collection rich in several hundred impressionist and modern paintings and pieces of African and Oceanian arts. The collection reflects as much the expression of a personal taste as that of the social ambition of its owner.
Paul Guillaume meets the beautiful and magnetic Juliette Lacaze, a penniless provincial determined to make her fortune in Paris with her brother Jean. Paul gets married to Juliette in 1920 and renames her Domenica.
They are both as ambitious as each other and even if they seem “new money”, the couple is famous in Paris: Paul builds his notoriety on avant-garde tastes and publicity stunts while Domenica creates and maintains, thanks to a unanimously recognized seduction, their social network, which ranges from art to politics.
Unfortunately, professional relations, artists or friends of the husband quickly become the lovers of the wife.
In 1932, the couple meets the architect Jean Walter, who is not indifferent to Domenica’s seduction. Paul Guillaume turns a blind eye to the relationship his wife has with the architect – they even live together for a while in the same apartment.
In September 1934, Paul Guillaume suffers from violent stomach aches. Instead of calling a doctor, Domenica, who considers herself a healer, takes pride in treating her husband at home. After twenty-four hours, she decides to drive him instead of calling an ambulance. Paul Guillaume’s condition deteriorated so much that he lost consciousness and dies suddenly of acute peritonitis, at the age of 42.
The wait-and-see attitude shown by Domenica is striking, but her behavior in the following weeks is even more questionable. Before his death, Paul Guillaume had the idea of donating his personal collection to the Orangerie museum, much to the chagrin of Domenica – and had drawn up two wills. Wills that no one finds.
After much research, Domenica finds one will, which makes her the sole heir of her late husband. To avoid any dispute over the inheritance of Paul Guillaume’s fabulous collection, Domenica will invent a pregnancy and a child. She puts cushions under her dresses and soon presents herself with a baby called Jean-Pierre, presented as the child of Paul Guillaume even though the child was bought in Paris.
She has no maternal instinct – the child embarrasses her now that she has managed to extinguish any dispute over the inheritance of Paul Guillaume’s collection. Her lover Jean Walter, on the other hand, has a strong paternal instinct. He agrees to marry Domenica if she resolves to finally legally adopt Jean-Pierre, which she accepts. They get married in 1940.
WWII brings an immense fortune to Jean Walter, who had meanwhile invested in the mining industry in Morocco, and Domenica has relations with high-ranking Nazi dignitaries in order to prevent her art collection from being plundered and sent to Germany.
She may want to be the popess of contemporary Parisian art, but Domenica sells many of the avant-garde paintings acquired by Paul Guillaume. She keeps the most classic works of Matisse and Picasso and acquires numerous impressionist paintings.
The waltz of lovers and “ménages à trois” continues. The latest lover is a doctor, Maurice Lacour.
Jean Walter will also die, in once again astonishing circumstances. In June 1957, while he accompanies his wife and her lover for lunch in a small countryside bistro, a car hits him while he is crossing the street. Domenica refuses to call an ambulance and decides to drive him, while he lies unconscious on the road, with Maurice Lacour to the hospital. Jean Walter will already be dead when he arrives at the hospital.
Domenica is now 60 billion francs rich.
It is now the Guillaume heir who becomes a burden. In 1958, Jean-Pierre, the adopted toddler is now an adult. He receives a visit from a hitman who claims that he had been approached by Maurice Lacour and Jean Lacaze – Domenica’s brother – in order to kill Jean-Pierre. Even if Maurice Lacour and Jean Lacaze spend eight months in detention, they will be acquitted by a more than questionable legal decision on the grounds that the assassination attempt did not begin to be carried out – even though the hitman had received 3 million francs.
Did Domenica use her political connections to get a favorable legal decision? Maybe. We will never know if the long talks between Domenica and the Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux which will lead to the transfer of the “Jean Walter – Paul Guillaume” collection to the Orangerie museum were due to respecting the donation wish expressed by Paul Guillaume or the release from prison of Jean Lacaze and Maurice Lacour.
In any case, Domenica will resolve to make the French State the heir to her collection for a symbolic sum thirty to fifty times lower than the market value of the 146 works that make up the Walter Guillaume collection. 47 paintings will be sold in 1959 and 99 paintings will be sold in 1963.
Domenica will retain the enjoyment of her paintings until her death, and her brother and her lover will in the meantime be released from prison.
Domenica dies in 1977. She would never reconcile with her son. She will be remembered as a beautiful, dominating, manipulative, greedy and insensitive woman.
What remains is this “Jean Walter – Paul Guillaume” collection at the Orangerie museum. It’s a beautiful collection that will have obsessed its creator Paul Guillaume and his heiress Domenica. It will have indirectly emotionally damaged Jean-Pierre, the adopted child.
Two portraits of Domenica by André Derain and Marie Laurencin can also be admired there.
Domenica by Derain and Laurencin
I note with amusement that the “Jean Walter – Paul Guillaume” collection whose sulfurous history you now know is located in the basement of the building – like an obscure place in psychoanalytic terms where unsaid things, unacknowledged passions and repressions reign – while Monet’s Water Lilies – painted with obvious love and plenitude, are on the ground floor and radiate serenity. The symbolism speaks volumes.
November 24, 2023
