that rises up into Montmartre, an area thick with artists, writers, and
courtesans. (There were so many
lorettes
living there that they were
named after the local church, Notre Dames des Lorettes.)
Because Mosselman was married, he used Fernand Broissard as a messenger between
himself and his lover, and it was through this man that the young woman met a
wider circle of friends. Broissard invited her to the monthly dinners he gave
at the Hôtel Pimodan, where he lived on the Ile-Saint-Louis. Soon she was
also attending meetings of the
Club des haschichins
, which met at
Théophile Gautier’s apartment in the same building. Balzac, Gautier,
Flaubert and Maxine du Camp, and Baudelaire are only a few among those who have
become illustrious who attended these events. By then, Aglaé had changed
her name to the more elegant Apollonie Sabatier. And because of the electric
effect of her presence at these gatherings, which seemed to fuse all who were
present into a more generous body, she was also given another name:
la
Présidente
. Soon she was entertaining the same men, together with
Delacroix, Berlioz, Gérard de Nerval, Henri Murger (whose novel inspired
La Bohème
), and Arsène Houssaye at her own apartment.
Sabatier’s presence also contributed a distinct aesthetic pleasure to the
gatherings. Like Blanche d’Antigny,
la Présidente
loved
fashion. She dressed with such a striking originality that the artists she knew
began to involve themselves with her wardrobe. As well as making creative
suggestions regarding her apparel, some of them even designed clothing for her.
Both dressed and undressed she was sculpted by Jean-Baptiste Clésinger
twice; Ernest Meissonier did several paintings of her. Ernest Feydeau made her
the central figure in his novel,
Sylvie
.
The love affair she had with Baudelaire was notoriously short. In the beginning,
Sabatier did not return the poet’s love. But after
Les Fleurs du
mal
was published, she offered herself to him as an homage. They spent
only one night as lovers, after which she fell in love with him and he fell out
of love with her. Though she came to love the poet as well as his words,
Baudelaire, as it turns out, loved the ideal he had created of her more than
the breathing reality. “A few days ago,” he wrote, “you were
a deity, which is so convenient, so noble, so inviolable. And then there you
are, a woman.” Instead of lovers, they became friends.
There were many bonds between them, but perhaps the strongest was that they
were both captivated by beauty. Just as Baudelaire, who wrote a great deal
about the images being created by his friends, collected and studied art,
la Présidente
, who had been a singer and still loved music, also
surrounded herself with artists and their work, even painting, herself, in her
later years. They both loved literature. In the beginning it was above all
Baudelaire’s poetry that had impassioned Sabatier. And in different ways
they were both creators of beauty. What he described in words, she knew how to
embody. Sharing the love of beauty as they did, they were collaborators in the
creation of an aesthetic sensibility, giving shape to the astonishingly fecund
atmosphere of the nineteenth century.
Gustave Courbet captured a moment in the process of this creation with his
celebrated painting
L’Atelier du peintre
. In the middle of the
canvas, a half-finished painting sits on an easel. Before the easel stands a
model, who watches Courbet paint a landscape in which, curiously, no likeness
of her can be found. Aligned with her and witnessing the process, too, Sabatier
is prominent in the circle that, surrounding the work, seems almost to generate
the painting. She is dressed in black, a Kashmiri shawl draped over her
shoulder, her back turned to Baudelaire, who, sitting, turns his attention to
the pages of a book.
In Courbet’s mind, all those who had contributed to the chemistry of his
art must
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