Word: misia
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...MISIA: THE LIFE OF MISIA SERT...
What a life Misia Sert lived! Fauré gave her piano lessons. Ravel dedicated La Valse to her. Stravinsky presented her with the score of Le Sucre du Printemps. Diaghilev made her his ally; she was the only woman with whom he could feel intimate. Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard, Renoir, Vallotton painted her, sometimes obsessively. Cocteau modeled the heroine of his novel Thomas l'lmposteur on her. In the masterly hands of Proust she became two people, Princess Yourbeletieff, the young sponsor of the Ballets Russes: "One might have supposed that this marvelous creature had been imported in their...
...Walter P. Chrysler Jr. Paul Cezanne's portrait of his wife went for $112,000; Georges Braque's cubist Woman with Mandolin brought $100,800. more than double the previous top price for a Braque canvas; a pair of Renoir portraits (Ambroise Vollard as a Toreador and Misia Sert) sold for $61,600 and $44,800. Total sale: $613,256, which Chrysler will give to his Chrysler Art Museum in Provincetown, Mass., opened last year to show part of his massive (some 4,000 works valued at between $12 million to $15 million ) collection...
Then Edwards fell in love with an actress, and just when Misia was feeling most deeply forsaken, Jose Maria Sert, the Spanish painter, walked into her apartment wearing a sombrero and Spanish cape. Before leaving, he asked her to go to Rome with him for a few weeks. Amused, irritated and taken aback, she heard herself say she would be delighted. With Sert she "knew what it was to have a dazzled heart," and for the first time had the "calm and frightening feeling of something final...
Their few weeks together stretched into a couple of decades during which Misia continued to charm such people as Diaghilev, Clemenceau and Debussy, and Sert won an international reputation as a mural painter, plus a fortune in commissions. All was idyllic until Sert met Roussadana Mdivani, a Georgian princess young enough to be his and Misia's daughter. It was a strange triangle, with Sert torn between Roussadana and Misia. each of whom loved and consoled the other at every turn of Sert's affection. Misia let him have a divorce. "The poor girl was not responsible...