In the 1950s, Marjorie Price was working in television and pursuing painting—her true passion—at night. Price's career aspirations as an artist were not in line with her family's wishes. “I was supposed to be a suburban housewife like everybody else,” Price says. With money saved up, she left behind a respectable potential husband and traveled to Paris, where she immersed herself in art. Soon after, she met a French painter and married him after a whirlwind affair.
Price imagined an idyllic retreat and sea breezes—à la Gauguin—when she and her husband bought a house in rural France. Instead, they landed with their young daughter on a dilapidated, centuries-old farm, redolent not of the ocean, but of cattle manure. Their neighbors dressed in black, spoke Gallo and farmed as their families had since the 15th century. Price, out of her element, found an unlikely friend in an elderly neighbor named Jeanne Montrelay.
Decades later, Price has written A Gift From Brittany (Gotham Books, 2008), a love story of sorts about her and Jeanne. The two women could not have been more different. Jeanne had never strayed from tradition. Sent out to mind cattle at age 2, she was illiterate and, at 68, still worked every day in the fields. She lived in a house with a packed dirt floor and, before she met Price, had never talked on a telephone, eaten at a restaurant or ridden in a car.
Nevertheless, Jeanne became Price's best friend, teaching her about everything from neighborhood politics to how to recognize when a shallot is at its peak. As Price's marriage unraveled, Jeanne provided her with unconditional support. When Price's husband angrily demanded that she give up her blossoming painting career, Jeanne encouraged Price to keep painting, going so far as to hide the young woman's watercolors in her barn.
In 1970, Price moved with her daughter to Rome. She thought of Jeanne, who died in 1987, nearly every day, throughout a painting career that has included exhibitions at galleries and museums in the United States and Europe. After returning to the States in 1977, Price was a graphic designer, and published two art-education books. She also competed with a synchronized swimming team in Manhattan.
She often thought of writing about Jeanne as she went about life in a cozy apartment overlooking Central Park, but it took the threat of not being able to paint to motivate the story. About 10 years ago, back surgery made it impossible for Price to lift a canvas or walk without a cane. She is now fully recovered, but, at that crucial point in her life, “Jeanne appeared,” she says. She began to record the flooding memories of her long-ago friend, and her pain subsided. When she stopped writing, the pain returned. “So, I kept writing,” she says.
