How The Artist Staged a Murder-Mystery In Front of Real Monet Masterpieces
Writer and director Aram Rappaport takes Galerie inside Connecticut’s Hill-Stead Museum for an inside look at the six-part series
The Artist, a gritty Gilded Age murder-mystery starring Mandy Patinkin as its fictional robber baron victim, was granted access to film on location in Farmington, Connecticut’s Hill-Stead Museum for weeks. Aram Rappaport, the writer and director of the six-part series, still can’t understand why.
He thinks back to the cast and crew crowding into the 1901 Colonial Revival estate to film an intimate ballet performance. The Steadicam operator was also spinning around the living room where hanging artworks include two of Claude Monet’s haystacks and two canvases by Édouard Manet. “It became sort of very clear, oh, yeah, if someone just trips and falls, that’s like a $500 million mistake,” Rappaport tells Galerie. He looked over at Anna Swinbourne, Hill-Stead’s executive director and CEO, and said, “I wouldn’t have let us in here.”
So why did Swinbourne, who takes her role as steward very seriously, allow the museum to double for the 1906 Rhode Island country home of Patinkin’s Norman Henry and his fiery wife, Marian, played by Janet McTeer? As she told director of photography Luca Fantini when he asked her if she was really okay with this, “It’s been sitting here waiting for you.”
Watching the series, streaming now on The Network with the final three episodes dropping Christmas Day, it’s hard to believe that Rappaport had never heard of Hill-Stead before scouting the location as a last-minute replacement—less than a week before production commenced. When Swinbourne read the synopsis, she felt he must have. The estate had been designed by Theodate Pope Riddle, daughter of Ohio iron industrialist Alfred Atmore Pope, as a love letter to her parents. Since women weren’t yet licensed as architects, her father had Stanford White sign off on Theodate’s plans and be the architect on record. White’s murder factors into the plot of The Artist, as does the theme of a woman’s work being erased: In Rappaport’s story, which blends fact and fiction, Marian had her plans for the light bulb stolen by her former classmate and lover, Thomas Edison, played by Hank Azaria.
Even more kismet: The Artist has cash-strapped Norman commissioning a portrait of the Henrys’ poodles from a painter who turns out to be the broke and nearly blind Edgar Degas, played by Danny Huston. Alfred Pope was one of the earliest American collectors of French Impressionism. “This was a hot house of contemporary art, full of Impressionist works that were so weird and vanguard at the time in the United States,” says Swinbourne. Hill-Stead’s impressive holdings include examples of Degas’s three favorite subjects (ballerinas, bathers, and horses), with the 1886 pastel The Tub being of particular note.“Degas scholars from all over the world have to travel to our museum to see it because it doesn’t leave the house,” says Swinbourne.
She was equally protective of the work during production. The Tub hangs in the parlor bedroom, which was off-limits for filming but open for inspiration. “We watched people walk in there and just burst into tears,” recalls Rappaport. Security was strict overall. Swinbourne jokes that she used her 5’11” frame and stern voice to “put the fear of God” into the 100-person crew when explaining why historical Hill-Stead is not their typical set. They weren’t allowed to wear shoes, only slippers. They couldn’t touch anything. They’d need a museum staff member in each room at all times to remind them not to touch anything.
Use of original furniture and decorative objects was approved on a case-by-case basis. “I think the only thing we added inside was a desk in Norman’s office, and the only thing we swapped out was a chair here or there,” says Rappaport. The museum staff agreed to move Degas’s Dancers in Pink (c. 1876) from the living room for filming, as it’d conflict with the story. The dust ring left on the wall—right beside Manet’s The Guitar Player (1886) and above his Toreadors (c. 1862-63)—was written into the script.
Swinbourne hopes The Artist brings her hidden gem, also home to works by Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, and Japanese masters Hokusai and Hiroshige, highlighted in the exhibition “The Great Wave: Japonisme at Hill-Stead” opening Dec. 11, the attention it deserves. As an art historian, her review of the series is glowing: “One of my favorite quotes from Degas is about how he wants to be illustrious but unknown,” she says. “He’s so deeply textured on all fronts, and to this day, he keeps eluding our grasp. This show, and Danny, nailed it.”