MARCEL PROUST - IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME
By: Fereshteh Priou
October 2017
Misia Sert was an astonishingly beautiful woman born in 1872. Raised in St. Petersburg, where her Polish sculptor father was working on a commission at the Russian Imperial court, she lost her mother — a member of a distinguished Belgian musical family — at birth. She was sent to Brussels to be raised by her grandparents. A musical prodigy, she learned piano as a child sitting on Franz Liszt’s lap and later studied under Gabriel Fauré.
She moved to Paris as a piano teacher but soon entered the glittering world of Belle Époque society through a series of marriages. Her first husband was Thadée Natanson, a Polish émigré, radical socialist, and founder of the influential journal La Revue Blanche. Her second was Alfred Edwards, founder of the newspaper Le Matin. Rumor had it that Edwards fell in love with Misia while she was still married to Natanson and eventually “acquired” her through a financial arrangement between the two men.
Her third and final husband was the Spanish painter and muralist José Maria Sert. He introduced her to morphine and is said to have awakened her sexually. Their marriage was stormy, marked by mutual infidelity and betrayal. Misia coped by throwing herself into society life. Her salon quickly became one of the most coveted in Paris, though she was famously selective about her guests.
Misia was painted by many of the greatest artists of the era, including Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vuillard. She was a major patron and muse to musicians such as Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes. She maintained a close friendship with Coco Chanel (with persistent rumors that they were lovers) and was admired by writers including André Gide, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Cocteau, and Marcel Proust. When artists faced financial hardship, she often provided generous support.
Her beauty was legendary. Monet, then old and arthritic, reportedly asked her to bare her breasts so he could paint them (she refused). Vuillard, who painted her many times and gave the portraits fanciful titles, was deeply infatuated; he once burst into tears while painting her. Misia later remarked that Vuillard’s tears were the most beautiful declaration of love she had ever received. Picasso, a close friend and godfather to whose first son she stood, had a more complicated relationship with her. His biographer John Richardson portrayed her as manipulative, meddlesome, and untruthful.
Marcel Proust was one of her most ardent admirers. He partly modeled the character of Mme Verdurin on Misia. Like her fictional counterpart, Misia surrounded herself with the artistic and intellectual elite. The more exclusive her salon became, the haughtier she grew. One evening at the opera, she surveyed the audience through her lorgnette and declared dismissively, “There is no one here!” — a remark worthy of Mme Verdurin herself.
Misia Sert died in 1950 and was buried in a pink dress designed by her friend Coco Chanel. In 2012, she was the subject of a major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris titled Misia, Queen of Paris.
Article by: Fereshteh Priou - October 2017