Katya's Biography Project
In spring of 2019, during the Covid pandemic, I made my first contributing to Wikipedia: an expansion of folklorist Frances Carpenter's short "stub" biography. I'd already done a biographical piece on Frances for my personal blog; I found it an interesting exercise to move elements of that piece over to Wikipedia—teaching myself the Wikipedia entry "form" in the process.
Since, I've continued writing in both forms. Eventually I discovered that this work was serving to revisit questions I'd first studied as an academic, and I realized that neither form was doing all I wanted. My Wikipedia writing functions as a sort of gift to future researchers: its goal is to be accurate and well-cited. My blog posts are intended to be interesting, amusing, and opinionated; enjoyable for casual readers.
These lives aren't necessarily a lot more than either; but certainly they are intended to be more complete.
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Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska, Pierre & Balthus as Adolescents
(c. 1921) Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
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Eugen Spiro, Else Dorothea Spiro, Ætat 14 (1899)
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Rainer Maria Rilke & Balthazzar Klossowski's Misou (1921)
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Baladine Klossowska, Rilke asleep on the small sofa (c.1921)
Chateau Muzot (c. 1920)
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Baladine Klossowska,Illustrations for
Rilke's Fenetres (1927)
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Baladine Klossowska, notebook page:
recumbant woman (1956)
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Eugen Spiro, La Danseuse ~ Baladine Klossowska (1901) Berlinische Galerie
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Baladine Klossowska (undated)
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Baladine with Rilke, Chateau Muzet,
Switzerland (1923)
Baladine with Rilke & Balthusz,
Chateau Muzet, Switzerland (1923)
Baladine Klossowska
Baladine Klossowska (21 October 1886 -1969) was a German painter. Born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, in Breslau, Germany to an artistic Jewish family with roots in Lithuania and Russia, she married fellow painter Erich Klossowski and moved to Paris, France, at the turn of the 20th century, where she was a vivid and active participant in the explosion of artistic experimentation then in force throughout the city.
Mother to controversial modernist painter Balthus and writer Pierre Klossowski, and lover to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke until his untimely early death.
Early Life & Family
Born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro (Else) in Breslau, Germany (now Polish Wrocław), to a Jewish family; her father, Abraham Beer Spiro, was a Lithuanian Jewish cantor, who had moved his family from Korelichi in Novogrudok district of Minsk Governorate to Breslau in 1873, several years before Else's birth.
In Breslau, Abraham was appointed Chief cantor of the White Stork Synagogue – one of the city's two main synagogues. The Spiros were a sprawling, artistically-inclined family of thirteen children. Else's older brother Eugene announced his artistic ambitions early, with lessons from XX. He made use of his family, and particularly his beautiful younger sister Else, as his models.
Move to Paris
Else married painter and art historian Erich Klossowski, Eugen's "best friend," in 1902. The couple left Breslau the same year, and were comfortably settled in Paris by 1903. Klossowski, with claim to a minor Polish title, had ample means to keep them comfortable as they pursued their artistic interests. Else, barely 16 years old, embraced Parisian life, renaming herself "Baladine" (apparently after a character in a book)
As Baladine Klossowska, Klossowski's young partner had painting lessons with Pierre Bonnard, was able to follow her interests artistically (largely in watercolor), and maintained a lively household full of books, art, artists, and intellectuals.
Like many of the women in the intellectual and artistic circles in Paris during this first decade of the new century, Baladine, though preoccupied with household tasks, continued painting, if episodically, even after her sons, Pierre (1905) and Balthasar (1908), were born. She continued visiting the Louvre to study and copy from the masters (Poussain, evidently a favorite), and publicly exhibited her art under her mononym (although the specifics of where and to whom, annoyingly, have yet to be determined). For these years, her children enjoyed a home in a comfortable building on the Rue Boissonade, full of maids, both their parents' art, Cézannes, Delacroixs, even a drawing by Gericault, sumptuous parties and elaborate birthday celebrations, fondly recalled in their later years.
WWI Displacement
This lavish Belle Epoque life of art, conversation, and careless luxuries ended in 1914, with the commencement of hostilities between Germany and France.
Although the Klossowskis identified as Polish, they were in France on German passports. They were forced to leave the city with little more than they could carry. They removed to Berlin, where several of Baladine's many siblings, including Eugen, were settled. Erich soon found work, and success, as a theatrical designer for Berlin's Lessing Theatre. Baladine, by contrast, found war-time Berlin, and increasingly Erich, less amenable.
In early 1917, with the war ongoing, Baladine decamped with her sons to Switzerland. They lived initially with friends in Bern. By fall, Baladine had found a small furnished flat in Geneva, where she and the boys would ride out the remainder of the war, under highly straitened circumstances.
Klossowski's Catholicism would preclude a solution of their situation via divorce.
Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke visited the young mother and her sons in Switzerland in July of 1919. Rilke was 44, Baladine, 33, and the boys 14 and 11.
At the time, Rilke was struggling to emerge from a severe depression that had limited his writing for several years, both through and following World War I.
The pair had previously known of each other in Paris, and had even met, but had not been more than acquaintances—and at the time, Baladine had been both very young and pregnant with her second child. Rilke had learned of her split from her husband and was determined to look her up in Switzerland. In fact-—her name was first in his address book! Baladine greeted him courteously, they ended up talking for hours.
Rilke had planned to be in Geneva for five days. Instead he stayed for fifteen.
Klossowska has been described as both "inspiring" Rilke in his late poetry, and "suffering emotionally in his hands," but it is clear that when he re-entered her life, both gained. Baladine "gave Rilke a new clarity of mind," and Rilke became a second father-figure to her sons. The pair had an intense, episodic romantic relationship, troubled by Rilke's inability to work for prolonged period with others in his home, and Baladine's ongoing financial concerns. Baladine herself would describe their years together this way: "My sons were my school and my pleasure and I was their playmate. When Rilke came, we were like four happy children together."
Baladine and Rilke lived together much of the year in 1921, renovating the Château de Muzot, which Rilke's friends first rented and then later acquired for him. She returned to Berlin in November--circumstances were such that she had let the Geneva apartment go, and was living, with the boys, at her brother Eugen's.
Before departing, she tacked up a postcard of Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano's drawing, Orpheus, over Rilke's desk. Baladine had earlier given Rilke the gift of Ovid's Metamorphosis (1920: a French translation which included the episodes of the Orpheus cycle). These gestures from Baladine are understood as having provided the seed crystals that enabled Rilke to approach this cycle in a form appropriate to his poetic voice.
1922 opened with Rilke writing what he later called "a savage creative storm," his two most important collections of poetry, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in 1923.
Her sons developed close relationships with Rilke. Balthasar published his first book of watercolors about a lost cat, Mitsou, with text by Rilke.
Paris, Again
By the fall of 1924, she had claimed the combined studio and living space at 15 Rue Malebranche, which the Klossowskis had occupied pre-war. She enjoyed visits from Bonnard and others from the elite artistic circles, worked on her watercolors, and did her best to support her sons, both resident, but living independently, in the city. Rilke, who came to Paris in early 1925, extended his stay, and the two of them spent the last weeks of summer traveling to Italy.
On one of the rare interludes when they were both staying at Muzot and enjoying a respite from the tumult of their separations, Rainer Maria Rilke and Baladine Klossowska made a journey through the mountains, in the course of which they decided to collaborate on a book in which his poems and her illustrations would appear side by side. Its theme was windows. The slight, elegant volume was not published until 1927, the year after the poet’s death. But with its fifteen poems dedicated to Baladine, and her ten etchings, it preserved the essence of their bond. The women created by Balthus’s mother are all locked in trances.
In 1927, she oversaw the publication of a special limited edition of Rilke's work, Fenêtres, ten poems illustrated with ten engravings by her hand.
Klossowska, by the mid 1930s, though "slightly hunchbacked, a woman of delicate beauty, sharp intelligence, and acid wit."
"una mujer morena e intensa de gran belleza, que lleva una vida al margen do los convencionalismos."
During their romance, Rilke called Klossowska by the pet name "Merline" — Sorceress. Their voluminous correspondence (first published 1954) reveals much of their self-conscious, intellectually vivid, and passionate relationship.
1. James, Ian, and Russell Ford. “Introduction: Whispers of the Flesh: Essays in Memory of Pierre Klossowski.” Diacritics 35, no. 1 (2005): 2–7. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4621021.
2. Peteuil, Marie-Françoise. Helen Hessel, la mujer que amó a Jules y Jim. Spain, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España, 2012.
3. Rewald, Sabine. Balthus. Metropolitan Museum of Art Press, 1984.
4. Weber, Nicholas Fox. Balthus: A Biography. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.
5.Wolff, Charlotte, Hindsight: An Autobiography. Plunkett Lake Press, 2113.
References
References are not linked, but are available via Internet search where indicated.
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Theatrical designs for MacBeth and Salome, Dorothy C. Smyth (~1905-14) Glasgow School of Art
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Works by Rudyard Kipling, cover art & interior pages, Dorothey C. Smyth (1899) Pub. Cedric Chivers of Bath, UK
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Self-Portrait, Dorothy C. Smyth (1921)
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Dorothey C. Smyth, Tristan & Isolde (1901)
stained glass, GSA
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Dorothy C. Smyth,
Cupid's Palace,1909
Retirement of Maurice Greiffenhagen. Picture with staff
(including Dorothy Carleton Smyth, third from right), GSA
Dorothy C.Smyth, "Hey Diddle Diddle," ~1925
Dorothy Carleton Smyth
Dorothy Carleton Smyth (1880 – 16 February 1933) was a Scottish artist, a compatriot of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, active in Theatrical and Costuming Design, and one of the leading lights at the Glasgow School of Art during the post WWI period. Her association with the Arts & Crafts Movement in England and Scotland, together with her work in fine book-binding, illustration, and faculty leadership at the GSA, place her at the hub of the Golden Age of Illustration. Named, in 1933, as GSA's first female director—by a unanimous vote of the School's governing board—her tragic early death by brain hemorrhage in that same year deprived Scotland of an accomplished, active and internationally respected proponent of Scottish art.
Early Life & Family
Smyth was born in Cambuslang near Glasgow in 1880 to Elizabeth Ramage and a jute manufacturer, William Hugh Smyth. Her parents are said to have originated from France and Ireland, respectively, but the case for the assertion is not clear. The Victoria and Albert Museum makes the rather wild claim that Dorothy was Charles Dickens's grand-daughter. This would seem unlikely save for... the unconventional, well-connected, and supremely self-confident life Smyth and her sisters appear to have enjoyed.
The family moved to Manchester in the 1880s, where Smyth and sisters Olive and Rose spent their childhoods. All the children were artistically inclined, Dorothy and Olive (1882–1949) to the visual arts, Rose, the third sister, to music and composition.
Education: The Arts & Craft Movement
Between 1885 and 1893 Smyth attended the Colonel Clark's School in Manchester and the Manchester High School for Girls. She studied under Walter Crane at the Manchester School of Art between1893 and 1897. Crane, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement, espoused the practical application of the arts for books, clothing, and the use of artisanal craft in all aspects of production.
As early as 1895, the precociously gifted Dorothy was working for the bookbinder Cedric Chivers. Chivers was designing handcrafted editions of popular works such as The Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, as well as being at the forefront of the development of new book-making techniques. The billet seems a natural extension of her work with Crane; impressively, Smyth was already so accomplished an illustrator that she was charged not merely with interior design-work (as in her illustrations to Chivers's Rudyard Kipling sets) but also with the designs of the elaborately hand-colored covers of these luxurious "vellucent" (thinly vellum-sheathed) books.
The Arts and Crafts Movement, beyond the abstract value it placed on the work of the individual hand, also advocated for the development and maintenance of work rooted in a specific place, of "terroir." Following her early years of training with Crane, Smyth chose, at eighteen, to return to Scotland and her early home, to continue her studies at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
In Glasgow (1898), Smyth, just 18, fell in with the theater crowd, actively participating in GSA's many student-produced plays and masques. A critic writes: "her fascination with exotic clothes" led to her interest in theatre and costume design, but this does not seem quite right. Already Smyth seemed to conceive a holistic view that did not focus on one gee-gaw or sparkling ornament, but overall compostition and integrated palettes.
Her work, with its elegant, art nouveau aesthetic, simply stood out. Even before she had received her diploma, her stained glass window Tristan and Isolde was selected for exhibition at the Glasgow International Exhibition. Following her graduation from GSA (1902), an anonymous female patron paid for her membership in the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists and financed her travel to Florence, Paris, and Switzerland to "study the European masters."
Touring with the Theatre Companies, 1904-1914
In 1903, Smyth was commissioned by prominent Glasgow art dealer Craibe Angus to exhibit in Turin, Cork, Toronto and Budapest. Later that same year, through the GSLA, Smyth would meet Frank R. Benson, Esq., a theatrical producer who hired Smyth for his touring company.
She would spent the next decade in a whirlwind of travel and costume-work, in Paris and Stockholm and further. Before World War I, Smyth was selected from a number of applicants to design and superintend the making of all the costumes for the world tour of the Quinlan Opera Company. She designed the costumes for Benson’s Shakespearean productions and Sir John Martin-Harvey’s “Richard the Third,” and also for the pageants at Stratford-on-Avon.
Smyth's work for Benson including the costumes for a number of Shakespearean festivals in Stratford, for Benson and other theatrical companies, as well as work for pageants, festivals, and the "tableaux" that remained popular during this period.
In 1912, Smyth was back in Glasgow, organizing the committee for a holiday "pageant tableau," and working for the Glasgow Repertory Company. With her sister, Olive, and several other female artists from Glasgow, Smyth helped found the Sister Studios, offering classes in a variety of disciplines (including metalwork, embroidery and ceramic decoration). This work gave Smyth detailed managerial experience that would serve her well on her permanent return to Glasgow to take up a teaching post at her old school.
Teaching and Commercial Work
In 1914, she returned to GSA to teach, simultaneously continuing her work as a professional artist creating "book illustrations, sculptures, silverwork and portraits" for commercial businesses and private individuals.
Leadership Appointments at the GSA
In 1927, Smyth was appointed head of the Commercial Art Department (1927), where she remained until 1933.
In early 1933, Smyth was offered the full Directorship of GSA, "perhaps the first women to be offered such a post within a higher education institution." Smyth accepted, however, she passed away little more than a month later, from a massive brain hemorrhage.
Legacy
Smyth lived with her sisters for much of her life, and her sister, Olive, was also at GSA during this period, teaching fashion. In a short life sketch like this, it is not possible to encompass the suggestive details of the Smyth's friendships and personal connections in the Glasgow arts scene; what mysterious confluence of forces-—talent, charisma, personal connections—nurtured in this woman so independent and distinctive a life?
Following Smyth's untimely death on February 16, 1933, in her Cambuslang home, Sir William Oliphant. Hutchinson was brought over from Edinburgh to take up the GSA Directorship. A "great traditionalist," he seems to have been a most clubbable gentleman, who "served on numerous art-related bodies."
Even in this century, staff at GSA think back on "the glowing reports regarding [Smyth's] work and teaching. We can only wonder what the School would have been like now if it had had its first female director in 1933!"
In 2012, Dorothy's work made an appearance on PBS's Antiques Roadshow. A woman brought in three absolutely beautiful paintings (from a set of nine!), scenes from the plays of Shakespeare. The thing that strikes me most about these paintings—the high quality of the work. What else lies out there, waiting for discovery? The gleanings of what one can find now, on the Internet—it's highly random, unorganized.
What will Dorothy's status as an artist be, when one day, finally, someone has gathered her best work together, and we finally can take in the scope of her vision, the work of her hands?
At the very least, this: elevated.
1. Burkhauser, Jude (ed). "Glasgow Girls," in Women in Art and Design 1880-1920. Canongate.
2. Gray, Sara (ed). British Women Artists: a Biographical Dictionary of 1,000 Women Artists in the British Arts, Applied Arts, & Decorative Arts. Dark River (2019).
3. Cumming, Elizabeth, Hand, Heart and Soul: the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland. (2007) Edinburgh: Birlinn, p. 60.
4. "Smyth, Dorothy Carleton (1880-1933)," Glasgow School of Art: Archives & Collections. web.
5. Fell, H. Granville. "Vellucent Book-Bindings: A new method of decoration for bound books–the 'Vellucent' process" in The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine & Applied Art. (1903), pp. 169–176. web.
6. "Dorothy Carleton Smyth - 'a living force contained in a human body'" GSA: Archives & Collections (19 Aug 2015). web.
7. "Smyth, Dorothy Carleton," in Benezit Dictionary of Artists. (2011) Oxford University Press. web.
8. Smyth, Dorothy Carleton, Tabbard, Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. web.
9. Woman's Leader. National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (1912), p. 196. web
10. Strang, Alice. Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965. (2015)
11. Elizabeth Ewan; Sue Innes; Sian Reynolds. The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004. Edinburgh University Press (2006), pp. 136–7
12. The Glasgow Herald (16 February 1933). "Glasgow Art Teacher - Death of Miss D. Carleton Smyth". Glasgow’s Cultural History. p. 6. web.