In the eyes of many Frenchmen, the worst thing famed Painter Pierre Bonnard ever did was to make an honest woman of his pink, satin-skinned model, Marthe de Meligny. When, in 1930, after living with Marthe for more than a quarter-century, Bonnard marched her down to the mayor's office and married her, he set in motion the grinding machinery of French law which finally crushed him and threatened every creative artist in the nation.
To begin with, Marthe had to sign the marriage register with her less aristocratic real name of Maria Boursin. Embarrassed at having to reveal her humble origins to her husband, she told a little lie; she swore that she had no living relatives.
Out of Joint. In 1942 Marthe died, and Bonnard, a frail, spectacled old man of 74, was quite lost without her. He was staggered when a letter arrived from the public registrar notifying him that, since Marthe had died intestate, their joint property would be sequestered until the question of heirs was settled. The "joint" property consisted of stacks of his unsold paintings and portfolios of drawings.
Since his brilliant, luminous canvases were even then bringing up to $10,000 each, an estate of several million dollars was involved. Bonnard's friends were gloomy; in their opinion there was no escape from the basic French law of "community of goods," and in time of war, with half France occupied by the Nazis, Vichy government officials would certainly sell his goods to pay Marthe's inheritance taxes. If only she had left a will!
The old man decided to act. In his small studio he took out a sheet of his fine drawing paper, wrote: "I name Pierre Bonnard my sole legatee," and signed it with the name of Maria Boursin. But he was so inept a scoundrel that he dated the will on the day he wrote it—ten months after Marthe's death. When Bonnard himself died in 1947, the obvious fakery of the will threw everything into confusion. Bonnard's direct heirs found themselves challenged for a half share in the estate by four nieces of his wife Marthe. The works that Bonnard had left behind—some 600 oil paintings, 500 watercolors, hundreds of drawings—were put under seal in the vaults of a Paris bank.
Cultural Clamor. For ten years the case dragged through the courts. A Paris tribunal held that Bonnard had committed a crime in writing Marthe's will; he was posthumously declared a forger, thief and receiver of stolen goods. A higher court argued that Bonnard could not have been a receiver of his own paintings, had faked the will only to facilitate matters. The even higher Court of Cassation set aside this decision and reaffirmed the basic law, ruling that an artist's work—unless he draws up a special marriage contract—belongs also to his wife.
This decision set up a cultural clamor. Feelings were heightened by the action of the divorced wife of Painter Andre Derain, who, suing for her share of the "community of goods," had sequestered Derain's studio and denied him access to a painting he was still working on. As sometimes happens in France, popular feeling outweighed the rigidities of law. Last week a court of appeal in Orleans reversed the decision of the Court of Cassation, handed down a final verdict awarding Bonnard's property to his own heirs.