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EUMsmall perfume bottle dyed green and labeled Belle Haleine, Eau De Voi-
lette—“Beautiful Breath, Veil Water”—by iconoclastic artist Marcel Duchamp sold
at auction at Christie’s in 2009 for $11,489,968. The title Duchamp gave this enig-
matic objet is believed to allude to Belle Da Costa Greene, an imperious figure
who ran J.P. Morgan’s library, a few steps down Madison Avenue from the financier’s former Manhattan
residence. Fresh off the boat from France in 1915, Duchamp had needed money; a mutual acquaintance
put him onto Greene, who in her capacity as Morgan’s librarian hired the new arrival as a translator.
Greene let Duchamp go after six weeks, a period during which Greene doubtless irked and intrigued the
artist, as she did so many others. The bottle originally held a Rigaud brand perfume, Un air embaumé,
and was made of peach-colored glass. Duchamp dyed the container green, perhaps an allusion to the
Belle Da Costa Greene story as well as a play on her family name. Aficionados (see “Decoding Duchamp,”
p. 57) argue that in creating the work Duchamp was encoding references to his temporary patroness. The
artist used the piece as an element on the cover of the only issue of the modernist magazine New York
DADA, produced in collaboration with the versatile, innovative American artist Man Ray in 1921. He did
not display the work until 1965, 15 years after Greene died.
Duchamp was among a circle of artists and scholars acquainted with the green-eyed Greene, who for her
time lived the fast life. She dressed and behaved flamboyantly—drinking and smoking, traveling solo,
enjoying numerous suitors, and conducting an affair with a married man. Greene had entered Morgan’s
orbit in 1905 through the banker’s nephew, Junius Morgan, an acquaintance from her job. Greene and the
younger Morgan, both bibliophiles, worked at the Princeton University Library in New Jersey. Introduced
50 AMERICAN HISTORY
Passing
Fancy
Belle Da Costa Greene, a black
activist’s daughter, reinvented herself
on the other side of the color line
By Sarah Richardson