A Master and his Muse, part 2

Aristide Maillol and Dina Vierny

When we last saw our protagonist, our hero if you will, he was about to meet the person who was going to change his life. That’s right, as promised, our subject today is the final decade of Aristide Maillol’s life and career. Ten very productive years during which an old artist got a little older and a girl became a young woman. And then there’s the artist’s very successful ‘afterlife,’ also courtesy of that young woman.

Figure 1. l’Été, Aristide Maillol, 1910, bronze, Jardin du Carrousel, Paris

Maillol, the artist (and the man, too, bien évidement) had an ideal female type. We are talking body type here, not personality type. The female form to which he was attracted is easily described. Stocky and short waisted, small, perky breasts and thick (probably powerful) thighs. (Figure 1) Did women with those attributes remind him of his neglectful mother, his long suffering aunt, or every girl he ever saw in his hometown of Banyuls-sur-Mer, in the south of France, a town that borders Spain and the Mediterranean Sea. Where Catalan as well as French are spoken. Maybe.

A young girl fitting that description wandered into Maillol’s life in 1934. But she was not Catalan. No, Dina Vierny, née Aibinder, was born in what is now Moldova into a family that, in 1926, was forced to flee a government with which it was increasingly and dangerously at odds. Dina was seven. The family settled in Paris without a sou. Her father, a pianist and composer, organized chamber music concerts in their Paris apartment. Russian and French intellectuals attended. One afternoon Saint-Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince was there and so too was Jean-Claude Dondel, one of the architects who designed the Palais de Tokyo. Dondel told the young girl that she looked like a Maillol sculpture. He wrote to his friend Maillol and told him the same thing. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Dina Vierny arrosée par Jacques, photo Pierre Jamet, Anti-Fascist French Youth Camps, 1930s

Maillol wrote to Dina, “Mademoiselle, I am told that you look like a Maillol and a Renoir. I will be satisfied with a Renoir ”.

Andre Gide was either there when Dondol’s letter arrived or spoke with the artist afterwards. According to Gide, Maillol said, "A model! A model! What the hell would I do with a model? When I need to verify something, I go and find my wife in the kitchen, I lift up her chemise, and I have the marble.” (Figure 3)

Figure 3. L’Action enchaînée, Aristide Maillol, 1905, bronze, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris (Clotilde, Maillol’s wife)

Maybe that is what he did when he was younger, but by 1934, when Dina came into Maillol’s life, he was in his mid 70s, and his wife, Clotilde was in her mid 60s. I don’t know if her thighs had changed much during the previous 50 years, but there was enough marital discord that one can imagine Clotilde would not have been as receptive to having her skirt pulled up and her thighs examined as she had been when they were both younger and maybe happier. Maillol's wife had already been displaced as her husband's model before Dina showed up, she had already caught him ‘in flagrante delicto’ with one of his models. But maybe at that particular moment, the couple was having a sort of detente and Maillol hesitated to bring another potential source of trouble into his life with his long suffering and loud complaining wife.

Dina was initially no more enthusiastic than the artist. But Dondel persuaded her to go to Maillol’s studio in Marley-le-Roi outside of Paris. According to James Fenton, all it took was one look and Maillol wanted to start work immediately. Because Dondol was right, Vierny was Maillol’s ideal; broad hips, big thighs, high breasts. (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Dina Vierny, photo Pierre Jamet, Anti-Fascist French Youth Camps, 1930s

By 1934, the year they met, Maillol's career had stalled. The public (and probably the artist, too) was bored with his calm, classic nudes. (Figure 5) Vierny’s dynamic personality revitalized the old sculptor and inspired works like ‘La Rivière’. (Figure 6) Sure the statue is a full figured gal, that’s what Dina was, but this one is in motion. She is lying not standing. Her pose is flailing, not calm. Her arms are raised in agitation not in welcome. Her legs are cycling rather than at repose. Her head is tossed back. Her hair is as active as her limbs. It is as if she is trying to flee, trying to protect herself.

Figure 5. Pomone, Aristide Maillol, 1908, bronze,Musée Maillol, Paris

Figure 6. La Rivière, Aristide Maillol, 1938, lead, various locations (including. Beeldentuin Middelheim Museum)

At first, Dina modeled for Maillol only when he was in Paris. But in 1938, Maillol closed his Paris studio and moved to Banyuls. Dina followed and moved in next door. After a while, Maillol moved again, this time with Dina, to a property up in the mountains, La Metairie. Clotilde, the long suffering wife, stayed in Banyuls.

Dina described it this way, ”I became like a daughter and entered the world of Maillol, …. I went for one hour, and I stayed 10 years.”

Here is what Clotilde wrote to a German sculptor friend of theirs in 1943, “If you knew how much I suffered when Dina Vierny lived with us! God be praised! She’s gone! (she had been arrested by the Nazis) and I can sleep more peacefully! They were always…at the Metairie.…Me, I couldn’t go so far, because of my legs.…Don’t do anything to bring her back.”

Wow! That is some level of animosity, to ask somebody not to help somebody else, who btw was both Russian and Jewish, escape from the Nazis. So, that’s Clotilde.

Dina spoke with Susan Stamberg in 2008, just months before Dina’s death. When she started posing for Maillol, she posed fully clothed. To prove it, she told Susan about a drawing she had found, by Maillol, of a young girl, with braids, sitting on a chair, fully dressed. That was her. That proved she posed clothed. When Susan Stamberg asked Dina if she felt uncomfortable posing nude. Not at all, she said, she and her friends were part of a ‘back to nature’ movement. They took off their clothes often and easily. (Figure 7) But, according to Dina, Maillol was too shy, too pure, to ask her to undress. She was the one who finally had to suggest it, after 2 years of modeling. A man whose subject had been the female nude for nearly half a century, too shy to ask a model to undress? Okay.

Figure 7. Dina Vierny, photo Pierre Jamet, Anti-Fascist French Youth Camps, 1930s

Then Susan Stamberg asked her about a drawing of her, completely nude, looking down. (Figure 8) Dina explained that she is looking down because she was studying. Maillol had rigged a stool so that she could put her books on it and read while he worked. Then Susan asked if she was paid. Dina laughed and said of course, she wouldn’t have modeled otherwise.

Figure 8. Dina Vierny, Aristide Maillol, drawing, 1930s

So, what was Dina doing when she wasn’t posing (nude or otherwise)? She was working for the French Resistance, which she had begun doing before she moved to Banyuls. One day she apparently fell asleep while modeling and finally admitted to Maillol that she was part of a group smuggling fugitives across the border into Spain. Rather than try to dissuade her, he showed her a safer route and offered her a studio he had higher up in the mountains, where people could sleep after they arrived in Banyuls and before they trekked into Spain. "She led refugees across a path that Maillol had shown her, a safe way over the mountain,” said Michael T. Kaufman, NYT foreign correspondent. "People trying to escape the Germans were told to take the train to Banyuls and go to the station cafe, where they would find a young woman (Dina) in a red dress. (Figure 9)(They were not supposed to talk to her, just follow her) She would lead them to a studio where they could sleep, and the next day they would walk a couple of miles into Spain. The woman in the red dress. She saved the life of my father. (a Jewish, Polish refugee)” (NYTimes 10/31/2004)

Figure 9. Portrait of Dina, Aristide Maillol, 1940, oil on canvas, Musée Maillol, Paris

Dina said that the group she belonged to was the American Rescue Center, an organization set up by the American journalist Varian Fry, to help intellectuals and artists flee Vichy France. But years later when Fry was writing a book about the Center, he could not find any records that confirmed Dina’s participation. He wrote to her asking for any documents she had about her involvement with the group, but Dina never replied to his letters. He finally concluded that without corroborating documentation connecting her with his group, he couldn’t include her in his book. Further, if she had helped people cross the border, it must have been in affiliation with others, not him.

All of this began to sound a little Lillian Hellman/ish to me. Did you ever see the film Julia, based on Hellman’s book, Pentimento? In the book and film, the Lillian Hellman character travels through Germany to a conference. She meets up with an old friend involved in anti-fascist activities and agrees to smuggle cash out to help Jews escape. The account is harrowing. Historians tried to confirm Hellman’s account and couldn’t. They discovered that most of it was fiction. Which was fine, she was a storyteller. But she presented it as if it was autobiographical and it wasn’t. Oh well.

Figure 10. Dina, sketch, Henri Matisse, 1949

Fry may not have found her in his records, but the Vichy police found her and they arrested her in 1940. Maillol paid for a lawyer, who got her acquitted. Maillol sent her to Nice, to keep her out of trouble, with two letters of introduction, one to Matisse, another to Bonnard, suggesting that they "borrow" her. Matisse had many models, but he and Dina hit it off, it was a relationship that proved to be very useful to Dina after the war. For Matisse, she had to remain still when she modeled but she could talk. (Figure 10) For Bonnard, she was supposed to move around, but forget he was there. Bonnard's 1941 painting Le Grand Nu Sombre was the result of their collaboration. (Figure 11)

Figure 11. Le Grand Nu Sombre, Pierre Bonnard, 1941, Oil on canvas, Musée Maillol, Paris

Dina was arrested a second time, in Paris, in 1943. This time by the Gestapo. The charges against Dina were serious, helping refugees, working with Communists, making cross-border currency deals. She was held in the Fresnes prison, where Nazis took captured members of the French Resistance. The conditions were horrific, prisoners were tortured, many died. She was held there for six months. Her release was the result of an appeal Maillol made to an old friend, Arno Breker, the sculptor of the Third Reich, Hitler’s favorite sculptor. (William Grimes, NYT 01/26/2009). As Fenton describes the events (where Clotilde’s plea to Breker NOT to help Dina is mentioned!), in connection with accusations against Maillol of collaboration in both the First World War and again in the Second. Apparently the year before, in 1942, Breker held an exhibition in Paris, to which Maillol was invited. Maillol accepted, it gave him the opportunity to check on his studio at Marly-le-Roy, in the occupied zone. But it infuriated people and rumors began to spread that he was a collaborator. But he had been friends with Breker since 1927, and if he had refused Breker’s invitation, things might have worse for Dina, much worse. Her story could have ended there.

This is what happened. Breker secured Dina’s release but he didn’t tell Maillol. Instead he traveled to Banyuls to ask Maillol to sit for his portrait. Afterwards, he accompanied the elderly sculptor up to Paris. As they sat having lunch at a small restaurant, Dina simply appeared and sat down next to Maillol. Breker told her that she had to return to Banyuls and stop her activities because the Gestapo was watching her. One more misdemeanor and she would be killed. Or transported. As her father had been, to Auschwitz, where he died in 1944. The same year, Maillol died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident.

So, there she was 25 years old, one grand adventure over, a lifetime of adventures ahead of her. In his will, Maillol had made Dina and his son co-executors of his estate. When Clotilde died, Dina got complete control of it. And she started buying examples of Maillol’s early work - paintings, ceramics, tapestries to add to what was already in his estate. So she would have examples of his life’s work.

In 1947, Matisse encouraged Dina to open an art gallery, which she did, on rue Jacob, in the 6eme, one of my favorite rues. It is still there, stop in the next time you are here, in Paris. (Figure 12)

Figure 12. Galerie Dina Vierny, rue Jacob, Paris

As Dina was collecting art for her gallery, she was also ‘’collecting'' apartments in the 18th-century Hotel Bouchardon on rue de Grenelle, in the 7eme which now houses the Musée Maillol, where this story began. But which didn’t open until 1995 under the auspices of the Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol. (FIgure 13)

Figure 13. Musée Maillol, Paris

Thirty years earlier, Dina had already made Maillol’s sculpture a part of Parisian life when she persuaded the French government, and eventually André Malraux, De Gaulle's Minister of Culture, to accept 18 Maillol sculptures. They have been on permanent display in the Tuileries since the mid 1960s. (Figure 14, Figure 15)

Figure 14. Les Trois Grâces, Aristide Maillol, 1930, lead, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

Figure 15. L'Air, Aristide Maillol, 1938, lead, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

Interesting, it is only Dina’s relationship with Maillol which I discussed here, with no reference at all to Dina’s three husbands. So, here you go. Sacha Vierny, a photographer and singer, was her first husband, they were married but separated during WWII, when she was Maillol’s model. Her second and third husbands were sculptors. She had two sons from her second marriage, one became the curator of the Musée Maillol. The other, the director of the Fondation Dina Vierny. After the birth of each son, Dina wrote a letter to Arno Breker thanking him for saving her life.

Copyright © 2021 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved.