The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 September – visitation – art by James Carroll Beckwith, Pekka Halonen & Suzanne Valadon – Le Fantôme de l’Opéra – photography by Peter Basch

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

dream visit…
From a deep sleep to walking down a dark corridor-
wait, how did i git here and where does this go, he wonders
Up ahead, a shadowy figure, a woman, opens a door and goes in-
should i go in, he thinks, if this were a horror movie someone 
in the audience would yell, do not open the door, but he does
Inside the room a woman sits at an easel painting a portrait-
that looks like Suzanne Valadon, workin’ on a self portrait
Then he sees the ephemeral woman leave the room
through another door, he follows and 

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

went right away to my weekly visits
to you in your condo on Peachtree
“Oh yes! Where it all started”
on Wednesdays i would come
straight from work down Ponce
“Where and when we learned
all about each other”
the food you prepared was fabulous
passion followed and flourished
and we fell
“We will always have
those cherished visits”

convenin’ with ephemeral ones, perhaps with Le Fantôme in mind, who knows the possibilities, and thinkin’ about what Leroux wrote about wearin’ masks, had them all, but the indifference one was a mainstay accessory in my wardrobe, never went outside without a hat and a mask, and only put the masks away when alone, you know, a sharp dressed man

these days governed
by views sought
of beauty, now
with another
and the verse
of course

little visits throughout
visions, words, you
it all comes together
what i read this mornin’
where the flow takes
without hesitation
follow, somethin’
will emerge to sustain
make it all worthwhile

Pale Love, Pale Rider

for Gay

we kissed under the trees
serenaded by cicadas

one night, alive,
crossin’ from what
we thought lost,
until that moment

i have been tellin’ you
where to find what you seek

then you kissed me,
for the first time,
yourself, here

and we left together
keepin’ our promise

a creature
of imagination

so none
more surprised
than me when
reality intervenes

when she kissed me,
for the first time,
herself, me, here

and we went off together….

Vesper martini
cheers y’all

these were all taken at 246 in downtown Decatur, a favorite place to sit at the bar, hopin’ you will come in

Chianti, Villa S’Anna, Colli Senesi, Tuscany
Cheers y’all

Fernet branca
cheers y’all

if not to be
enriched each day
with wonderful moments,
then what is the point
…

embrace
beauty or sorrow
never mediocrity
…

Leroux wrote
that a true Parisian
learns to wear a mask
of gaiety over sorrows
and one of sadness,
boredom, or indifference
over inward joy

well then, i could pass
…

Christine’s father believed
that every great artist
is visited by the Angel,
at least once

if that is so,
then this soi-disant poet
can at least claim
to have been visited
by you

not by an angel,
at least not one sent
from heaven
not a believer

could be a spirit
i have felt their presence
though not in a while

could be the words
they come every day

or you, if you stop by

other than that
no visits
goin’ on here

despite what some,
or one thought

he is out there on the mesa
writin’ songs for the muse
She is the flame,
She is the fuse
Loadin’ up her palete
out on the edge of away

Acceptance yields
A certain contentment
So that all that matters
Is verse and colors,
Rhythm and weep,
Read ’em and blues

A certain contentment
Or rather, certain senses
Have become dulled
Long buried and forgotten
Not to be resurrected

Resurrection
Helluva concept
Of certain kinds
I still believe
The kind found
In well written verse,
In sad ol’ songs
And art that has soul

By the waves, your skin streaked by the moonlight
Feelins stir, the shadows slowly retreat
Pale blue eyes gaze in wide wonder

Soft wind passes, caresses in the night
And in the mountains, amid the wonder
Somethin’ mystical, listen to the wind

Horses tethered nearby
Campfire crackles
Blanket of stars above
Two joined as one
In a passion, unlike anything
They have ever known

James Carroll Beckwith
c. 1880

Today is the birthday of James Carroll Beckwith (Hannibal, Missouri; September 23, 1852 – October 24, 1917 New York); landscape, portrait and genre painter whose Naturalist style led to his recognition in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century as a respected figure in American art.

Beckwith died of a heart attack in his apartment at the Hotel Schuyler on West Forty-fifth Street in New York City, after having taken a taxi cab ride with his wife in Central Park.

His papers, including his sketchbooks and the diaries he kept from 1871 until his death in 1917 are held by the National Academy of Design in New York City.

Gallery

The Old Pier Glass

Portrait of Evelyn Nesbitt, c. 1901

Nymph and Cupid

Margharite

girl with flowers

Woman with Guitar

L’empereur

L’empereur

Today is the birthday of Pekka Halonen (Linnasalmi, Lapinlahti, Finland 23 September 1865 – 1 December 1933 Tuusula, Finland); painter of landscapes and people in the national romantic style. His favorite subjects were the Finnish landscape and its people which he depicted in his Realist style.

Halonen in 1899

In 1895 Halonen married a young music student, Maija Mäkinen. In the beginning of their marriage, the couple lived in several places before settling down in a house with a studio on Lake Tuusula in Tuusula, Finland in 1895. Here the Halonen family lived in an imposing pinewood villa known as ‘Halosenniemi’. Halosenniemi was designed by Halonen himself and his brother Antti and was completed in 1902.

Gallery

Swim on the Go

nude model

summer idyll

Woman in a Red Dress, 1911

After the call hours

Madonna, 1902

On the water, 1922

Double Portrait, Halonen and his wife Maija, 1895

Väinämöinen in Tuonela, 1895–1910

Today is the birthday of Suzanne Valadon (Bessines-sur-Gartempe, France 23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938 Paris); painter and artists’ model, born Marie-Clémentine Valadon. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The subjects of her drawings and paintings included mostly female nudes, female portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition.

Valadon debuted as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modeled for over 10 years for many different artists including: Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She modeled under the name “Maria” and was thought to have had affairs with the artists she modeled for. She was considered seductive, provocative, comely, voluptuous, and flighty. Toulouse-Lautrec nicknamed her “Suzanne” after the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders. She was considered a very focused, ambitious, rebellious, determined, self-confident, and passionate woman. She was also known to be good friends with Edgar Degas.

Perhaps the most recognizable image of Valadon would be in Renoir’s Dance at Bougival from 1883, the same year that she posed for City Dance. In 1885, Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair. Another of his portraits of her in 1885, Suzanne Valadon, is of her head and shoulders in profile. Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris along with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec’s subject in his oil painting The Hangover.

In 1896, Valadon became a full-time artist. She made a shift from drawing to painting during her initial affair with Andre Utter starting in 1909.

In 1883 Valadon gave birth to her illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, at the age of 18. Valadon’s friend Miguel Utrillo would sign papers recognizing Maurice as his son, although his true paternity is uncertain. In 1893, Valadon began a short-lived affair with composer Erik Satie, moving to a room next to his on the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui, writing impassioned notes about “her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet”, but after six months she left, leaving him devastated. Valadon married stockbroker Paul Moussis in 1895, leading a bourgeois life for 13 years at an apartment in Paris and a house in the outlying region. In 1909, Valadon began an affair with the painter André Utter, age 23 and a friend of her son, divorcing Moussis in 1913. Valadon married Utter in 1914, and he managed her career as well as her son’s. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934, in which year she turned 69 and he 48.

Valadon died of a stroke, at age 72, and was buried in the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen in Paris. Among those in attendance at her funeral were her friends and colleagues André Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.

Gallery

Les baigneuses (1923), huile sur toile, musée d’arts de Nantes, France

Catherine allongée nue sur une peau de panthère (1923) Collection Privée

La Poupée abandonnée (1921), National Museum of Women in the Arts

Young Girl Bathing

Nude Woman with a Blue Shawl (1930)

Adam and Eve, 1909

joie de vivre, 1911), Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jeune femme faisant du crochet, (1892), huile sur toile, Paris, musée national d’Art moderne[

self portrait

Self-portrait

La chambre bleue), 1923

Young Girl in Front of a Window, 1930

portraits of Valadon by others

by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, c. 1888

Valadon in Dance at Bougival, by Renoir

by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1885

Renoir, 1885

Renoir, 1886-1887

On this day: Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera) a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux was first published as a serialisation in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909, to January 8, 1910. It was published in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte. The novel is partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century and an apocryphal tale concerning the use of a former ballet pupil’s skeleton in Carl Maria von Weber’s 1841 production of Der Freischütz. It has been successfully adapted into various stage and film adaptations, most notable of which are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical. One of my favorite books, and my favorite musical. I saw it in Austin with Jeanie Marie, the most beautiful and tragic woman i ever knew.

L'une des cinq aquarelles d'André Castaigne illustrant la première édition américaine du Fantôme de l'Opéra de Gaston Leroux (1911). — *L’une des cinq aquarelles* d’André Castaigne illustrant la première édition américaine du *Fantôme de l’Opéra* de Gaston Leroux (1911).

Excerpts

THE Opera Ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

…

Erik’s emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monster’s face.

“I went and released the young man,” Erik continued, “and told him to come with me to Christine…. They kissed before me in the Louis-Philippe room…. Christine had my ring…. I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the Rue-Scribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment…. I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it. … Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the forehead—don’t look, daroga!—here, on the forehead … on my forehead, mine—don’t look, daroga!—and they went off together…. Christine had stopped crying…. I alone cried…. Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon!…”

And today is the birthday of Peter Basch (Berlin; September 23, 1921 – March 15, 2004 New York City); magazine and glamour photographer. For over twenty years, Basch had a successful career as a magazine photographer. He was known for his images of celebrities, artists, dancers, actors, starlets, and glamour-girls in America and Europe. His photos appeared in many major magazines such as Life, Look and Playboy.

In 1950 Peter met Jacqueline Clara Marie-Marguerite Bertrand [de], a model/actress from Quebec. They were married in 1951.

Gallery