Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

THE ILL-FATED P IERROT : Charles Conder in Europe Charles Conder Le Retour de Pierrot Robyn Daw Facing page Charles Conder England/Australia 1868-1909 with Arthur Blunt and M. Maple Le Retour de Pierrot (The return of Pierrot) 1899 Hand-painted mahogany three-fold screen with silk panels 172x130x2cm (approx.) Purchased 1994. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery's Centenary 1895-1995 Above Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901 Portrait of Charles Conder C.1893 Gouache 47.3x36.3cm City of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums Collections, Scotland And the wild regrets and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die. Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898 t the time that Charles Conder was involved in making the JL Jfe screen Le Retour de Pierrot with Arthur Blunt, his physical health was failing and his financial situation was precarious. Though his friend and benefactor Fritz Thaulow had employed Conder to decorate his newly acquired house, and his painted silk fans were proving popular, the artist still owed money to creditors outside Paris. Conder had rented Blunts Paris studio all lined with red silk' for the first six months of 1899 in order to undertake a suite of works including the collaborative screen and chair. However, the demands of his creditors made his work inconsistent, and Conder regularly returned to the countryside to appease them: '— is behaving in a beastly way and wont let me go to Paris as I should do at once and claims his bill in the rudest way — he is a beastly man'.1 On his return to Paris his relations with Blunt were equally fraught, and tested the resilience of their friendship. He had met Arthur Blunt, a son of the Vicar of Chelsea, shortly after arriving in Paris. From initially having difficulties in working 'à deux' with Blunt, the relationship suffered irreparably: This row with Blunt means a lot of trouble for instance I can't leave the studio very well unless I pay him. He wants me to buy the screen the woodwork — and the chair — pay rent and private debts before we cry quits.2 The wood for the screen alone cost 500 francs, a substantial amount for an artist who could not even afford to pay the freight of his art works to England for his solo show, and no doubt fuelled his anguish.3Conder's tenuous condition, his ill health, appetite for self-destruction, and poverty had the effect of making his normally affectionate and gregarious character turn suspicious and accusatory. Conder had contracted syphilis during his time in Australia where, according to his patron John Rothenstein, his financial troubles were a contributing factor. 'He explained to his landlady that he had no money. "There are other ways of settling debts'^ she said meaningly to the handsome boy — and he never finished paying the price of those few weeks' lodging.'4 Of course, antibiotics had not yet been discovered as a cure and any prognosis was unfavourable: a tragic decline over several years leading to paralysis, blindness, madness and then death. It was not an uncommon illness at the time. Generally, the physician's only possible suggestions were to try and keep healthy, and neither to marry nor have children. On his arrival in Paris in 1890, equipped with a two-year bursary from his uncle, Charles Conder eagerly sought 'la vie bohème'. In the dancehalls of the Moulin Rouge and the Moulin de la Galette, whose walls were decorated with Pierrots and Pierrettes by Willette, he kept regular company with the formidable figures of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Louis Anquetin, who introduced him to a love of the demi-monde and Antoine Watteau, respectively. Although chronically ill, in his dress Conder was sartorially splendid in the style of one of Balzac's heroes from The Divine Comedy, and in his manner charming, especially to the ladies. His robust constitution was tested regularly with lusty excesses of alcohol and absinthe, long hours, hard work, and the 'wild flesh from loins to lips'.5His reputation as a rather dissolute character, whose company should be avoided by those with any moral fibre, was hard won. Fin de siècle France, but Paris in particular, was a focus for characters of enormous talent, intelligence and wit. Conder's contemporaries of the symbolist movement contributed to the controversial and passionate fervour that the city seemed to generate. But it was also a city of loss, of transient love and unrequited longing. A particular sort of aesthetic life was ending, and Conder must have been aware of this. During the decade that Le Retour de Pierrot was made, many of his friends and mentors disappeared from his life. The poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud had loved, quarrelled, influenced many others, and died. His fellow Englishman and 'decadent' artist Aubrey Beardsley, sick and frail, died 80 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965