the double life of a collector

IN THE TELERAMA ARCHIVES – Sixty years ago, the ashes of Jean Moulin were transferred to the Pantheon. Prefect dismissed by Vichy, he became a gallery owner in Nice in 1943. An excellent cover for the resistance fighter, himself an artist.

Un Utrillo and a Dufy in the window. Soutine, Kisling, Chirico and Bonnard on the walls. On February 9, 1943, as winter spread across the Côte d’Azur, the All-Nice of arts and society flocked to 22 ter, rue de France, just behind the Negresco hotel. The Romanin gallery was inaugurated there, which had just been opened by a young prefect dismissed by the Vichy government: Jean Moulin (1899-1943). In less than a week, he will fly to London where General de Gaulle is preparing to make him his sole permanent representative for the entire metropolitan territory, general delegate of the French National Committee (with the rank of minister), in charge to set up the National Council of Resistance (CNR). But for now, Moulin must welcome artists, collectors and amateurs. And then… patatras!

The official portrait of Marshal Pétain, hung as it should be, collapses to the ground with a resounding din. A happy omen for the owner of the place who doesn’t let anything show. Moreover, the gallery owner even goes so far as to give a cold shoulder to the secretary general of the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture, Clément Vasserot, future Creuse resistance fighter, formerly encountered in the ministerial offices of the Popular Front. Because the point here is to not ruin this extraordinary cover. On closer inspection, however, the Romanin gallery is much more than a simple screen. This is perhaps the first time that Moulin is in full agreement with himself.

“Art was also his life,” confides Christine Levisse-Touzé, director of the museum of General Leclerc de Hauteclocque and the Liberation of Paris, Jean-Moulin museum. From a very young age, he showed a real aptitude for drawing. “Moulin was built in a very dichotomous wayexplains Pierre Péan, who devoted a captivating biography to him. On the one hand he wants to please his father, a stern Republican notable, general councilor of Hérault, driven by the fierce desire to make his son a responsible citizen. On the other hand, he needs to dream and escapes through drawing. Art serves as a valve. If we don’t understand that, we’re missing the point. »

Introduced to modern art by Max Jacob

Alongside the functions he held in high administration, which he joined in 1917 during his law studies, Jean Moulin exhibited his first, very academic, works in 1922. He also published caricatures by Romanin, in satirical magazines, named after a medieval castle located not far from the Provençal village of Saint-Andiol, the family cradle. If he rubbed shoulders with the bohemia of Montparnasse from the 1920s, it was in Châteaulin, in Finistère, where he was appointed sub-prefect in 1930, that he learned about modern art from the poet avant-garde artist Max Jacob, one of Picasso’s first traveling companions.

Jacob explains Fauvism, Surrealism and Cubism to him. And it was probably on his advice that he began to collect Soutine, Valadon and Rouault. In 1933, after transforming his dining room into a workshop, he also began illustratingArmorTristan Corbière’s collection of poems, from which he draws his strongest drawings, a series of engravings haunted by death. As if they announced the coming horror of the concentration camps.

Appointed prefect of Eure-et-Loir in 1939, Jean Moulin wasted no time in putting down his pencils. In June 1940, the armistice had barely been signed, the Germans asked him to cover up their abuses by passing them off as acts committed by Senegalese riflemen. He refuses and is arrested. Fearing that he would break down under the blows, he attempted suicide. On November 2, 1940, Vichy relieved him of his duties. The senior official then retreated to Saint-Andiol, came into contact with local resistance leaders, and very quickly understood that, to be effective, the metropolitan movements must unite under the authority of General de Gaulle. It’s up to him to make the link between those inside and London.

But Jean Moulin feels that he needs a cover. He established himself as a farmer. Except that his absences are too frequent for it to seem credible. If he were an art dealer, on the other hand, he would have to meet painters and collectors all over France… All he has to do now is find premises. And above all, a trustworthy person to manage the matter. She presented herself to him in Megève where he had taken ten days of vacation after returning from London on January 1, 1942. “It was very usualjustifies Christine Levisse-Touzé. To have perfect cover, the resistance fighters had to live normally. » Especially since Jean Moulin meets the beautiful Colette Pons there, whom he tries in vain to seduce, before offering her the management of a gallery in Nice.

He takes advantage of his gallery trips to locate landing sites, weapons caches and establish new contacts.

Christine Levisse-Touzé, director of the Leclerc Moulin Liberation Museum

Why Nice? The city was then under Italian occupation, less harsh than the German occupation. And then, “he is not known there and has no ties. The heart of its resistance activities is in Lyon, then in Paris”underlines the director of the Jean-Moulin museum. “Nice is also a place where a lot of money circulatesspecifies art historian Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, author of an excellent study on artistic life from 1940 to 1944. The art market always thrives when the economy is in disarray. With the war, a large number of refugees flocked to the Côte d’Azur. Those who have become impoverished sell their master paintings. And those who make their fortune on the black market buy them. » Business therefore promises to be good.

Especially since there is no modern art gallery in Nice. No wonder! Vichy and its henchmen “hold the moderns responsible for the artistic decline of France and the ultracisist press unleashes itself against them in columns”, recalls the art historian. They are nevertheless tolerated in galleries or at auctions, with the exception of Jewish artists against whom fierce repression is carried out. Which does not prevent Jean Moulin from exhibiting Chaïm Soutine or Moïse Kisling but also Picasso considered by the Nazis as the most “degenerate” of all.

The Romanin gallery quickly enjoyed resounding success. The Prévert brothers go there regularly, as do Django Reinhardt, and Lydia Delectorskaïa. Both assistant and model of Matisse, she often came to ensure that the master was exhibited there in good company, as Pierre Péan reports in his book.

Visit a Parisian gallery

Difficult to see it as a simple cover for the resistance! Jean Moulin continued to visit the galleries, taking Colette Pons with him, buying watercolors by Marie Laurencin, drawings by Renoir, failing to be able to acquire his paintings. He approaches collectors so that they deposit their treasures with him and agree to be paid after the sale, announcing to his mother and his sister his pride in having given a Jongkind to the curator of the Grenoble museum. He goes to the painter Tal Coat in Aix-en-Provence, or to Pierre Bonnard with whom he discusses the idea of ​​a biography. “And takes advantage of his travels to locate landing grounds, weapons caches and establish new contacts”, specifies Christine Levisse-Touzé.

On the evening of May 27, 1943, the date of the inaugural meeting for the creation of the National Council of the Resistance in Paris, it was in a Parisian gallery that he met, at 7 p.m., with Daniel Cordier, its secretary general. . Because there are gouaches by Kandinsky there – about which Cordier admits he understands nothing in his Memoirs – but which Jean Moulin hopes to present in his gallery in Nice, about which he continually thinks. At dinner, as Max Jacob had done with him, he took care to explain to him that Cézanne “founded modern art”, that the surrealists have “introduces the unconscious and dreams into art” and that cubism is “the greatest pictorial revolution in history”, before offering to this future gallery owner History of contemporary art de Christian Zervos. “He was happy,” Cordier wrote.

Three weeks later, on June 21, Jean Moulin was arrested in Caluire. Interrogated and tortured, he died on July 8 on the train that took him to Germany. He who wanted so much to shine in the world of the arts will decline, until the end, the same identity in the face of his tormentors: Jacques Martel, painter-decorator.

Jean Moulin’s collection, his drawings and the paintings from his gallery (closed in mid-July 1943, when his sister Laure learned of his death) were bequeathed in 1975 to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Béziers.

Article published in Télérama n°3258 of June 23, 2012.