Drawing for 'La Vie Pensive' with Madeleine Zillhardt by Louise Catherine Breslau
Madeleine Zillhardt (June 10, 1863 in Saint-Quentin, France – April 16, 1950 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) was a French artist, writer, decorator and painter. Her life and career are linked to another artist, the German-Swiss painter Louise Catherine Breslau, of whom she was the companion, the muse and the inspirer. They lived together for more than forty years, and their lives turned towards the arts. She was the sister of painter Jenny Zillhardt.
In 1884. Zillhardt asked Breslau to make her portrait. They would not leave each other and moved permanently together in 1886. In 1887, Breslau performed 'Contre Jour', one of her masterpieces, representing the couple she formed with Zillhardt in their intimacy. The painting was bought by the Swiss government in 1896, and is today held by the Museum of Fine Arts Bern. In 1908, Breslau painted 'La Vie pensive', another work of the couple, now displayed at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne.[1]
Zillhardt became one of the most original decorators of her time and Louise Breslau had a huge success in the world of painting. The two women become an essential couple in the Parisian art scene and receive their artist friends: Henri Fantin-Latour, Auguste Rodin, and Edgar Degas, of whom Zillhardt wrote a biography.[2] During the First World War, Madeleine Zillhardt distinguished herself in the decorative arts for her "patriotic faience", in support to Clemenceau or denouncing the bombing of civilians, like Fluctuat nec mergitur, Paris bombed, executed in 1918, now part of the collections of the French national Museum of Air and Space.[3] She also went back to painting with Breslau. They painted portraits of soldiers, nurses and doctors on the way to the front to give to their families before they left.
After the war, the health of Breslau declined until her death on May 12, 1927 in Paris.
Zillhardt spent the rest of her life perpetuating the work of her companion, donating to various museums. Zillhardt did not allow the work of her partner not to be too dispersed and to appear today in international collections.[4]
The barge 'Louise-Catherine'
In 1928, Zillhardt bought the concrete barge 'Liège' in Paris in order to make it available to the Salvation Army. With the support of Winnaretta Singer, princesse de Polignac and heiress of the company of sewing machines Singer, the barge was rehabilitated by Le Corbusier in 1929, with his student, Japonese architect Kunio Maekawa.
According to the will of Madeleine Zillhardt, the boat took the name Louise-Catherine in tribute to Breslau[5] and became a refuge for the homeless in winter and a summer camp for children, moored in Paris on the banks of the Seine, at the Pont des Arts and at the Pont d'Austerlitz.
In 2006, the boat was taken over the Fondation Le Corbusier. In 2018, it accidentally sank on February 10, during the flood of the Seine in Paris. The Louise-Catherine barge is still located at the Port of Austerlitz, in the 13th arrondissement, hoping for a renovation project.[6]
