The 115th Wedding Anniversary of André and Jeanne Salmon - A Portrait of Their Marriage
Marie Laurencin, Jeanne Salmon, 1923
Marie Laurencin, André Salmon, 1942
From the exhibition catalogue Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia and Yale University Press, New Haven and London, October 22, 2022 - January 21, 2024, curator Corrine Chong wrote this entry for the Marie Laurencin's Jeannot Salmon, 1923 (oil on canvas, 35 1/4 x 28 3/4 inches, Centre Pompidou-Musée National d'Art Modern/Centre de Création Industrielle, Paris):
Jeannot Salmon (née Marie-Jeanne Blazy-Escarpette, 1882-1949)
Marie-Jeanne Blazy-Escarpette, later nicknamed Jeannot, was a model and occasional prostitute prior to her 1909 marriage to the poet and art critic André Salmon, one of the most ardent champions of the avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century. The nuptials took place at the church of Saint-Merri in Paris on July 13, the day before Bastille Day, to take advantage of the festivities. Marie Laurencin was in attendance as the bridesmaid. In Laurencin's portrait of Jeannot (1923; Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris), she dons an elegant Grecian-style dress accented by golden bangles on her arm. She had an affinity for jewelry, perfume, haute couture, and lavish parties, all of which André willingly financed from his income as a columnist at Le Petit Parisien. According to the painter Alice Halicka, Jeannot exerted "absolute power" over her husband and discouraged him from writing poetry. In 1930, when André realized his childhood dream of living on the Île Saint-Louis, a small island in the Seine, Jeannot threatened to jump into the river, prompting the couple's move back to Montparnasse. After his assignment as a war correspondent in Beirut, Lebanon, and Syria during World War II, André returned to Paris to find Jeannot in debt and debilitated from her addiction to opium. She died in 1949. Four years later he married the former mannequin Angèle ("Léo") Myey [on October 29, 1953].
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