Nathanaëlle Herbelin
You taught me a significant number of things about love.
You loved me unconditionally. Already.
Sometimes, when we would argue, you would say that it’s not a big deal; it just proves that we love each other.
I saw you madly in love with your husband for forty years without waning. Always on fire. I saw you lose yourself, find yourself again and lose yourself again for him.
If you had stayed with your first husband, you would have lost yourself for other reasons. You would have faded away.
You taught me patience, diligence and rigor.
Here, you are in a sort of photo shoot from your first marriage, at nineteen years old, with that man you didn’t love so much, Jean Herbelin, my first grandfather. You made a courageous and radical choice for your time, taking your child and leaving the house, moving into a lonely apartment, waiting for Jean Sarrouy, the man you truly loved, who was your boss, your lover, your hope, to also leave his home and his alcoholic wife, and come and find you to create your own family, in a love that would last forever this time.
You waited for him for five years. The last two months, you decided to make him understand that you wouldn’t wait anymore. You disappeared, took your child and went back to your parents’ house. One fine day, while you were driving home with your father in the car, he suddenly said, annoyed under his mustache: “And here he is! The idiot is back...” You won. It was the beginning of the life you wanted, your hope in flesh and blood.
Your patience, resilience and stability grip my heart. Your routine reassures me. I painted you as many flowers as I could. I should have brought you even more on Sundays.
The black dress in My Grandmother on the Day of her Funeral is your waiting. The ghost in My Grandmother on the Day of her First Wedding is my regret, my ghost, in your coffin. A part of me went with you.
Credits
Nathanaëlle Herbelin, My Grandmother in her Wedding-Funeral, esquisse, 2022
[Huile sur bois, 20 x 30 cm]
Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Ma grand-mère à son premier mariage, esquisse, 2022
[Huile sur toile, 81 x 130 cm]
Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Ma grand-mère le jour de ses funérailles, 2023
[Huile sur toile, 143 x 203 cm]
© 2023, Nathanaëlle Herbelin
© ADAGP, Paris, 2023
Courtesy the artist
Text: Nathanaëlle Herbelin
Photography: Angèle Châtenet