Sarah Bernhardt, as Charles de Lagrille said, was not simply an incomparable artiste; she was the artiste—artiste in the most complete sense of the word. She understood and realised in the most perfect fashion the ideal of Beauty.
Sarah was not only the interpreter of Phèdre,
“La fille de Minos et de Pasiphæ,”
that demi-goddess whom she incarnated so superbly; she was also the wise genius who discovered and launched poets and authors without number—Coppée, Mendès, Richepin, and the two Rostands, father and son. But her love of beauty was not confined to the theatre alone; she was equally at home in all branches of Art; she was novelist, dramatist, painter and sculptor.
Sarah Bernhardt published, in 1878, as we shall see, a book which was greatly appreciated by the literary critics of the time and which was entitled “In the Clouds.” Replying to the famous and scurrilous publication “Sarah Barnum,” she wrote in retaliation a work called “Marie Pigeonnier.” She was also the author of her own “Memoirs,” and of two modest works of fiction, one of which was published only a few years before her death, as well as several short stories.
Three successes were recorded by Sarah Bernhardt, the dramatist. They were L’Aveu, produced at the Odéon in 1888 by such interpreters as Paul Mounet, Marquet, Raphaele, Sisos and Samary; Adrienne Lecouvreur, a piece in five acts, in which she played the title part herself, and in which have since played such distinguished actors as de Max, Gerval, Decœur and Charlotte Barbier; and Un Cœur d’Homme, a three-act play, which Henry Roussel and Emmy Lyn produced in 1909.
But the theatre is only one sphere of Art. The great actress was also a great painter. Her pictures, said critics, lacked the masterly technique that only long experience and training could have given her, but they were frank, well-proportioned, and distinguished for their colour values.
Just after she returned to the Comédie Française, she painted my portrait, and this picture, needless to say, is still one of my most prized possessions. It is reproduced in this book.
At the Salon of 1878 she showed a remarkable composition entitled “Young Girl and Death.” This canvas represented Death clutching at an artiste with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. It was an indication of the morbid strain in her character.
In 1872, after her first triumph at the Comédie, the sculptor Mathieu-Mesnier asked for permission to make her bust. She consented, watched his work, and asked innumerable questions. Thereafter, nothing would do but that she herself must become a sculptress.