Marie Madeleine Guimard
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
— 4 May 1816) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
ballerina
Ballerina
A ballerina is a title used to describe a principal female professional ballet dancer in a large company; the male equivalent to this title is danseur or ballerino...
who dominated the Parisian stage during the reign of Louis XVI. For twenty-five years she was the star of the Paris Opera. She made herself even more famous by her love affairs, especially by her long liaison with the prince de Soubise. According to Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...
, when d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
was asked why dancers like La Guimard made such prodigious fortunes, when singers did not, he responded, "It is a necessary consequence of the laws of motion".
Characteristics of her dancing
Not known for hazarding the more difficult movements that were being added to the professional repertory of balletBallet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
, she was renowned for her perfectly composed and fluid aristocratic movements, her mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
and above all for her expressively smiling visage. She wore her skirt hitched up to reveal an underskirt, without hoops or paniers, held out simply by a starched muslin petticoat
Petticoat
A petticoat or underskirt is an article of clothing for women; specifically an undergarment to be worn under a skirt or a dress. The petticoat is a separate garment hanging from the waist ....
. The portrait painter Mme Vigée-Lebrun said, "her dancing was but a sketch; she made only petits pas, simple steps, but with movements so graceful that the public preferred her to every other dancer." Other dancers, like Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...
, praised her enthusiastically, but Sophie Arnould
Sophie Arnould
Sophie Arnould was a French operatic soprano.Born Magdeleine Sophie Arnould, she studied in Paris with Marie Fel and La Clairon, and made her stage debut at the Opéra de Paris on 15 December 1757 and sang there for 20 years.She created for Christoph Wilibald Gluck the roles of Eurydice in Orphée...
, who thought that she had more graceful gesture than true dancing talent, remarked, after a piece of scenery fell and broke her arm in January 1766, after which she continued to make public appearances gamely, her arm in a sling, "Poor Guimard! if she had only broken a leg! that would not have kept her from dancing."
Biography
She was the love child of Fabien Guimart and Anne Bernard, legitimated at a late date (December 1765), who had been trained by the great choreographer d'Harnoncourt, who had entered her at the age of fifteen among the corps de balletCorps de ballet
In ballet, the corps de ballet is the group of dancers who are not soloists. They are a permanent part of the ballet company and often work as a backdrop for the principal dancers. A corps de ballet works as one, with synchronized movements and corresponding positioning on the stage...
of the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
. After a first affair with the dancer Leger, which produced a child, she was engaged at the Opéra (1761) and made her debut, as Terpsichoré, 9 May 1762, and soon was seen dancing at Court. She was kept by a stream of highly-placed admirers, including the gentleman composer Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, with whom she had a daughter in April 1763, and who always remained in her circle, even after she was finally taken up by Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise, a maréchal de France and great connoisseur of ballet dancers, who settled on her, it was said, 2000 écus a month.
House at Pantin
In a career of hitherto unequaled luxury, she bought a magnificent house near Paris at PantinPantin
Pantin is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe. Its post code is 93500.Pantin was once the site of Motobecane's operations...
, and built a small private theater connected with it, where Collé
Charles Collé
Charles Collé was a French dramatist and songwriter.The son of a notary, he was born in Paris. He became interested in the rhymes of Jean Heguanier, the most famous writer of couplets in Paris. From a notary's office, Collé was transferred to that of the receiver-general of finance, where he...
's Partie de chasse de Henri IV which was prohibited in public, most of the Proverbes of Carmontelle
Louis Carrogis Carmontelle
Louis Carrogis Carmontelle was a French dramatist, painter, architect, set designer and author, and designer of one of the earliest examples of the French landscape garden, Parc Monceau in Paris...
and similar licentious performances were given to the delight of high society. In truth there were three dinner parties a week, according to Edmond de Goncourt, one for the grandest of grands seigneurs and those of the highest consideration at Court; a second composed of writers and artists and wits that all but rivaled the salon of Mme Geoffrin
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin has been referred to as one of the leading female figures in the French Enlightenment. From 1750-1777, Madame Geoffrin played host to many of the most influential Philosophes and Encyclopédistes of her time...
; and a third to which were invited all the most ravishing and lascivious young women, according to the Mémoires secrets
Mémoires secrets
The Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des Lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'à nos jours is an anonymous chronicle of events that occurred between 1762 and 1787. Goodman thinks it started as a manuscript newsletter emanating from Paris...
attributed to Bachaumont.
At the same time, according to Baron Grimm
Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm was a German-born French author.-Early years:Grimm was born at Regensburg, the son of a pastor...
, during the bitter cold spell in January 1768, she asked for her allowance in coins, and, without taking an entourage, climbed to all the garrets of her neighborhood at Pantin, giving purses of money, coats and warm bedclothes. Throughout her career, her open-hearted generosity disarmed the pamphleteers.
Hôtel Guimard
In the early 1770s, in defiance of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of ParisArchbishop of Paris
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paris is one of twenty-three archdioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in France. The original diocese is traditionally thought to have been created in the 3rd century by St. Denis and corresponded with the Civitas Parisiorum; it was elevated to an archdiocese on...
, she opened the gorgeous hôtel Guimard
Hôtel Guimard
Marie-Madeleine Guimard was a dancer of the Opera appointed to 600 pounds annually. She made a fortune as mistress of prince de Soubise. She had an hotel in Pantin with a theater....
in the Chaussée d'Antin designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux in the latest neoclassical taste
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
, decorated with paintings by Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...
, and with a theater seating five hundred spectators. The house was almost finished March 1773 when Grimm's Correspondance littéraire reported the famous anecdote of Fragonard's revenge:La Guimard had quarreled with the painter, who had depicted her as Terpsichore
Terpsichore
In Greek mythology, Terpsichore "delight of dancing" was one of the nine Muses, ruling over dance and the dramatic chorus. She lends her name to the word "terpsichorean" which means "of or relating to dance". She is usually depicted sitting down, holding a lyre, accompanying the dancers' choirs...
in large panels of her salon, and found a substitute. Finding his way into the house unaccompanied, Fragonard picked up a palette of paints, and with a few deft touches transformed Mlle Guimard's Terpsichorean smile into a grimace of fury, without lessening in the least the likeness. When La Guimard arrived with an entourage and discovered it, the angrier she became, the more she represented the new portrait. In this Temple de Terpsichore, as she named it, the wildest orgies took place, according to her detractors. In 1786 she was compelled to get rid of the property, and it was disposed of by lottery for her benefit for the sum of 300,000 francs.
Her marriage and furniture
Soon after her retirement in 1789 she married Jean-Étienne DespreauxJean-Étienne Despréaux
Jean-Étienne Despréaux was a French ballet dancer, choreographer, composer, singer and playwright.He was an author of several opera parodies, appreciated by king Louis XV of France, including Berlingue based on Philidor's Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège.He retired in 1781 with pension of 1,000...
(1748-1820), dancer, song-writer and playwright.
In 2009 the bed made for Guimard to a Louis XVI design by French visionary neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) as "the high altar of the temple of love,” as Alan Rubin, the gallery owner, said, was offered for sale by Pelham Galleries at the European Fine Arts Fair in Maastricht.
Aside from her portrait by Fragonard at the Louvre Museum (illustration), several Fragonard portrait drawings are conserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon
The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie in the French city of Besançon is the oldest public museum in France...
, and a bust by Gaetano Muchi (1779) is at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.