Category Archives: Artists’ Graves

Mary Cassatt’s Chateau de Beaufresne

Friday, November 6, 2015

Posted by in American Artists in France, Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, France Travel

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ChBeaufresnePeatO'Neil

Front of Chateau de Beaufresne.

ChBeaufresnePeat_Acadia

Chateau tower with fire escape staircase added when the building was transformed into an  educational facility.

ChatBeaufresneRear

Sun room at rear of Chateau de Beaufresne. 

Chateau de Beaufresne

During the final decades of her life, Mary Cassatt lived at Chateau de Beaufresne in the town named Le Mesnil-Theribus in the Oise, north east of Paris. She first saw the Chateau in 1891 while the Cassatt family summered at Chateau Bachivillers a few kilometers away. The 17th c. hunting lodge known as Chateau de Beaufresne was for sale and Mary began inquiries.

During the summer of 1892, Mary again rented Chateau Bachivillers while she painted the three panels of the mural “Modern Woman” for the Chicago World’s Fair which opened May 1, 1893. The mural was 58 feet by 12 feet and apparently was mishandled and lost after the Exposition closed October 30th.

The timeline for Mary Cassatt’s life at the National Gallery of Art website states she acquired Chateau de Beaufresne in 1894, but another source* indicates she was already directing repairs and renovations at the Chateau de Beaufresne during the summer of 1892 while she was renting the nearby Chateau Bachivillers.

*(McKown, Robin. The World of Mary Cassatt, Thos. Crowell Co. 1972, p. 140.)

Many artists and collectors visited Cassatt during the years she lived at her beloved country home. Among them, Mary’s dear friend Edgar Degas visited often.

In 2002, I visited the Chateau to follow the footsteps of this beloved American painter. The modest-sized chateau is set in swathe of lawns and woods with a stream cutting across the lower estate. The building is currently used as an agricultural education center.  When we arrived by car from nearby Gerberoy, students of the eco-institute were slamming a soccer ball around on the back lawn. A few were sitting on upper window sills, a perch with a hawk’s view of arriving visitors.

The rear chateau is open to the sunshine while the front is shadowed by tall trees.   Two towers rise on each side of the chateau’s façade, each topped with a cupola. External modern staircases are affixed to the towers, for exit in case of fire.

Mary died June 14, 1926 and her grave is in the village cemetery accessed by a footpath from the Chateau. A small patch of dark evergreen bushes shields the Cassatt family tomb.  The grave tablets are plain granite which time has covered with lichen.  On the stones are carved the names Mary, Lydia, Mother, Father, Robert.

Resources:

Mary Cassatt Website

NYPL program on Cassatt and the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago.

American Archives of Art -photo of Mary Cassatt at Chateau Beaufresne

Chateau Beaufresne visit Notebook page

Travel Journal page with sketch of Mary Cassatt’s tomb and layout of Chateau de Beaufresne estate. © L. Peat O’Neil

The World of Mary Cassatt, by Robin McKown

Bibliotheque INHA

Artists in Chelsea, London

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Posted by in Artist's Studios, Artists in London, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves

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Turner’s and Whistler’s London — Footsteps of the Artists in Chelsea and Covent Garden

“I wander thro’ each charter’d street 
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. “
…from London by William Blake.

Cremorne Gardens No. 2 by James McNeill Whistler, 1877.

Cremorne Gardens No. 2 by James McNeill Whistler, 1877.

 
Painted anecdotes about London and her citizens crowd the walls of the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Tate, and the Courtould Gallery — all in London.    J. M.W. Turner’s seascapes and landscapes are displayed in many other museums. James McNeill Whistler’s paintings created in London and Paris are the bedrock of the Freer Gallery collection in Washington.

After studying the originals, a pilgrimage in the steps of the artists fleshes out the history. See London as the artists did; feel through the brick and pavement to the bare bones of the lives displayed in the landscapes, street scenes and portraits.

It was the charter’d Thames, water swirling and mirroring brilliant colors of sun and fire, that lured  J.M.W. Turner.

Thick-waisted and myopic, J. M. William Turner was that rarest of artists, a great success in his own lifetime. He was born in 23 April 1775 at 26 Maiden Lane above his father’s barber shop in the Covent Garden area. Home life was stressful with a mother who erupted in murderous tantrums which eventually landed her in an insane asylum.  Maybe she was overworked and had no help.

By 1804, Turner organized a gallery to exhibit his work at 64 Harley St. where he’d been living since 1804. In 1806 he acquired a house  at 6 West End, Upper Mall Hammersmith, keeping the Harley St. location as well.  Sometime around 1810 Turner changed addresses in London to 47 Queen Ann St. West, a skip and a jump from Harley St. By 1813, he’d designed and built a villa in Twickenham, named Solus Lodge and subsequently called Sandycombe Lodge.

Turner also is linked with Chelsea. He was attracted to the changing colors of the river.

Sunset by J.M.W. Turner.

Sunset by J.M.W. Turner.

Usually considered a painter of seascapes, Turner sketched and painted wherever he traveled, recording the passing scene. During his travels through Europe, watercolors and tablet at hand, he sketched public and private life – as played out in the streets and in the intimacy of various stately homes where he was invited by the nobility.

Chelsea, the Thames and Cremorne Gardens

Turner decided to buy a cottage in Chelsea to serve as hideout where he could work. Downriver from the City, Chelsea was then a waterfront neighborhood, not yet expensively chic as during the 19th century and today. He’d kept a painter’s hide out on the Thames before, at Sion Ferry House in Isleworth in the early 1800’s. Social London thought Turner lived with his family, but he spent most of his time at the cottage near Cremorne Gardens , at 118/119 Cheyne Walk, at the corner of Cremorne Road from 1846 until his death 19 Dec. 1851. His memorial is in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The mystic artist and poet William Blake was married in the same church where Turner studied the colors of sunsets, St. Mary’s, Battersea Parish Church on the south side of the Thames. He and Sophia are buried in Bunhill Fields, London.

http://leoplaw.com

Wm and Sophia Blake tombsone, Bunhill Fields, City Road, Finsbury.

Turner’s London is thriving along the Thames. The day’s moods live on and through a squinted eye, the boats and wharves look almost the same as what Turner painted. We can thank his eye astigmatism for paintings awash in brilliant sun, mist and waves splashed on the canvas.

One later Chelsea resident, Henry James, wrote: “The Embankment, which is admirable if not particularly interesting, does what it can, and the mannered houses of Chelsea stare across at Battersea Park like eighteenth-century ladies surveying a horrid wilderness.” (from English Hours)  The American painter John Singer Sargent rendered Henry James’ portrait in oil which hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

James McNeill Whistler, flamboyant ex-pat icon for many caped, incorrigible artists who came after him, also lived in Chelsea. Like Turner, Whistler gravitated to the steamy, foggy Thames embankment. There were sojourns in Paris, but Chelsea was home. The

Etching by James McNeill Whistler. University of Glasgow.

Etching by James McNeill Whistler. University of Glasgow.

Nocturnes with fog low on the river, were painted a few steps from his houses, at  101 Cheyne Walk (7 Lindsey Row at the time) and 21 Cheyne Row in 1890.  Whistler shuttled between Paris and 72 Cheyne Walk, his final home in Chelsea, until his death, July 17, 1903.  He is entombed with his wife Beatrix in London’t Chiswick Cemetery.

Whistler wandered along the river in the evening, mulling his dreams, then later would go out in a boat with a hired assistant and draw in the dead of night. Sometimes capturing the lights of the Cremorne pleasure gardens.  Whistler probably never saw the earlier Vauxhall amusement parks twinkling ion the south side of the Thames, but Hogarth was a regular.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge by James A. McNeill Whistler, 1872-75.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge by James A. McNeill Whistler, 1872-75.

Some of Whistler’s nocturnes, the murky paintings of the Thames lit by coal fires and moonlight cutting through, were painted from a narrow Chelsea house with a garden facing the Battersea Bridge. Whistler and other Chelsea artists painted the old wooden Battersea which was replaced in 1890 with a steel span.

Turner and Whistler’s London is thriving along the Thames. The day’s moods live on and through a squinted eye, the boats and wharves look almost the same as what Whistler or  Turner painted. We can thank Turner’s eye astigmatism for paintings awash in brilliant sun, mist and waves splashed on the canvas. Turner is buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Breathe in London and you breathe history. The streets and walls, the pavement, the people and most of all the river, transmit stories of London lives. Look at London through the lives and works of artists who recorded the city’s nuances and you’ll see a richer, deeper place.

Going there:  The A-Z London Street Atlas (called the “A to Z”) is the best tool for navigating London in digital or paper versions.  The index of all streets and multiple pages of enlarged map segments make this the standard guide for London.

Chelsea and Covent Garden are close to the center of London and easily reached by tube, bus or taxi. GPS, maps or A-Z Atlas in hand, walk through the neighborhoods. Usually, you’ll see a blue metal plaque on the outside of a historically significant building

Where to Eat:   Pétrus, the famous Gordon Ramsey flagship, caught flak (aka great publicity) during the dot-com flash era when a handful of financial managers spent some $65,000 on wine during dinner.

Dante Rosetti Self-portrait, 1847, two years before he met Elizabeth Siddal.

Dante Rosetti Self-portrait, 1847, two years before he met Elizabeth Siddal.

Pre-Raphaelite artist and model Lizzie Siddal and her painter-poet lover Dante Rossetti, lived in Chelsea at 16, Cheyne Walk.  It’s thought they favored meals at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand.

Rule’s Restaurant, 35 Maiden Lane, claims to be London’s oldest restaurant and probably is!  Close to Turner’s birthplace at 26 Maiden Lane, long ago, the restaurant was an artist’s and writer’s hangout. Today, the prices are a bit steep for the scribbling class, but the atmosphere compensates and then some.

Where to see the art: The Tate Gallery offers one-stop viewing of a rich collection of Turner’s works, as well as paintings, drawings and prints by Whistler, Blake and Hogarth.

For John Singer Sargent’s portraits, visit the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress can be seen in the Soane Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The National Gallery displays Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode and other works.

Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec in Place Pigalle Neighborhood

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Posted by in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Paris

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec shifted his attention to the Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, when the can‑can dancers became all the rage in the 1890s. Dozens of dancers still kick their booties to the rafters on the Moulin Rouge stage, the “greatest cabaret in the world.”

Steps away, rue Frochot, which runs between Place Pigalle and rue Victor Masse,  was home to the Dihau family at number 6.  Monsieur Désiré Dihau, the family patriarch, was a cousin of Toulouse-Lautrec.  The artist designed and illustrated the covers of published new songs by Désiré Dihau, who was a bassoonist with the Paris Opera

Side view of a man in dark 19th c. top hat and coat, seated in a garden, reading a newspaper.

Désiré Dihau. painted by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Orchestra. Toulouse-Lautrec painted his portrait at least twice.  Edgar Degas also painted M. Dihau.

Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent visitor their third floor flat at number 6, rue Frochot, a small cream-colored building, now with a theater at street level.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s last art studio was at number 15 ave. Frochot,  a private tree-shaded cul-de-sac that takes its name from rue Frochat which is nearly parallel.  Elaborate locked wrought iron and stained glass doors secure this enticing street with an artistic history.

Ave Frochot Paris

Iron gates to private street in Paris.

Gate to ave. Frochot, Paris 9eme.

Famous residents of the gated street (or its more travelled namesake – sources are difficult to verify)  include Alexandre Dumas (père) and Apollonie Aglaé Sabatier, a friend of the poet Baudelaire.  Victor Masse, the composer, died at number 1 ave. Frochot, which is partly visible from outside the secured gates.

 

Artists knocked on the door of the third and fourth floor studio-museum-apartment duplex at 37, rue Victor Masse just off ave. Trudaine. They sought the advice and approval of the master.  His friends, the painters Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, visited to discuss their evolving styles and exploration into other genres.  Degas also regularly spent time with the Manet-Morisot family in Passy, then a suburb of Paris, now the 16th arrondissement.

Degas moved to number 6, Blvd. de Clichy, where he died September 26, 1917 at the age of 83.  A short film of Edgar Degas walking in Paris in 1914 is available on YouTube.

Degas is buried in Montmartre Cemetery, (20, ave. Rachel or walk down the steps from rue Caulaincourt) in Division 4 along ave. Montebello, one of several streets inside the Cemetery.

François Truffaut grave stone in Montmartre Cemetery.

François Truffaut grave stone in Montmartre Cemetery.

 

Company there includes Zola, Berlioz, Offenbach, Heinrich Heine, the artist Fragonard and 20th c. film director Francois Truffaut.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died at the Chateau de Malromé
in the Gironde on September 9, 1901 at the age of 36. He was buried about 2 kilometers from the Chateau in the cemetery at Verdelais.

A Walk in Montparnasse

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Posted by in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Hotels in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France, Writers in France

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Walking Around Montparnasse, Paris

The name was a bit of a joke, a sly reference to Mont Parnassas, the highest point near Delphi, mythic seat of the god Apollo and the Muses, inspiration of poetry and song.  The topography south of the Seine is considerably flatter than Delphi, but the high-minded notion matched the aspirations of the writers and painters who scrambled to Paris to follow their muse.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that Montparnasse suffered the contractions and upheavals that changed parts of the right bank so radically during the 19th century.  When the boulevard construction directed by Baron  Haussmann churned neighborhoods on the right bank, Montparnasse was too sleepy to be included in the revamping.  The hidden neighborhoods, rustic stables and factory lofts offered quarters an artist could afford well into the 1960’s.  But then, the post World War II boom claimed low-rise blocks for office towers, shopping centers and transportation hubs, a process that accelerated during the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Some of the artists’ hideaways in Montparnasse still exist, despite construction of office towers, roads and apartment complexes.  Recently, a friend and I discovered an impasse off Ave. du Maine, one of those dead-end alleys lined with artists’ studios and galleries.  We were in search of a photo exhibition announced in ‘Time Out Paris,’ but the show was still being hung and not yet open to the public.  Instead, we prowled along the passageway, peeking into vacant studios, eyeing the one used by a floral arranging business and wondering what type of social pull it took to rent one of these historic spots. Surely, we realized, this was the same artists’ courtyard at 21, Ave. du Maine where Marie Vassilieff opened her studio as a canteen for artists in 1915.  Vassilieff served soup, dinners, fellowship and a helping hand during the terrible war years.

La Ruche, Artists' Studios. Montparnasse, Paris

La Ruche, Artists’ Studios. Montparnasse, Paris

Another remnant still standing is the curious building called La Ruche.  An early artists’ collective, La Ruche, (‘the Hive’) hides in the rue de Dantzig  (Metro: Convention, 15th arr.) a studio-refuge for artists and artisans.  The space was inaugurated in 1902 by Alfred Boucher who had salvaged small round wooden structures made by Gustave Eiffel for the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. The recycled wooden buildings were remade into miniscule studios stacked on top of each other.

Art Academies and Immigrants

Montparnasse was a neighborhood for art students, dealers and shops selling pigments and other supplies for the students enrolled in nearby art academies.  Henri Matisse opened an art academy in 1908 at 33 Blvd. des Invalides.  Matisse was a busy teacher, impresario and artists during those years.

The Colarossi School, established in the 1870’s, took over the Academy Suisse and moved to the courtyard of 10 rue de la Grande Chaumiere.  The Academy Julian differed from other art academies: women were admitted to the school and permitted to draw nude males in life study studio classes.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

During the years of revolution, hardship and war, Paris provided the flame of salvation for Europe’s refugees.  As the city of light and reason, the city drew immigrants from troubled countries to the east, people fleeting from failing monarchies, war and repressive governments.

Some left the Russia and the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I.  During the war and following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the floodgates opened to immigrants.  An international wave of immigrants from dozens of countries arrived after the Armistice in November, 1918 bringing artists, sculptors, writers and political poets.  The international community settled in Montparnasse. A list of these artists reads like a museum collection: Chagall, Dobrinsky, Epstein, Rivera, Matisse, Leger, Modigliani, Laurencin. Some are lesser known:  Indenbaum and the Polish-born Moise Kisling form the nucleus of the Ecole de Paris, the melting pot of all the refugees and émigrés.

Writers who lived in Paris at the time note in their memoirs that  Montparnasse was different after World War I.  The streets were lit up with

theater and cinema marquees.  The “Triangle of Gold of Montparnasse,” as it was called, was marked by three beacon-cafes: La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde and Le Dome.

While the big cafes attracted big spenders, the artists hung out there too.   When La Coupole opened, people wandered in and out round the clock.  La Rotonde attracted art dealers, writers, journalists and politicians.  Modigliani frequented Le Dome café intent on selling drawings to anyone with money.  Henry Miller caged meals from friends who willingly bought him dinner for his entertaining conversation.

Paris Cafe. Photo © P. Mikelbank

Paris Cafe. Photo © P. Mikelbank

The cafes became second homes for the artists and writers who didn’t have the space, seats or heat to accommodate clutches of friends.  Exhibitions were organized in the cafes to attract customers and newspaper attention.  The first exposition in a cafe was organized by Auguste Clerge, in the Cafe du Parnasse.  At just about the same time, a group of artist friends organized a show in Montmarte and in a Latin Quarter cafe called la Comete.  Cafe Petit Napolitain mounted a show called “Boite a Couleurs” and another show was held at Cameleon.  Once these art shows in cafes proved the artists could make a little money and the cafe owners would increase traffic, other cafes followed suit.

In due time, dealers snapped up the work of the best artists.  One of the most successful gallery owners, Berthe Weill steadily expanded her clientele, befriending artists and clients in the grand cafes. At first working out of her home, she moved through successive stores in rue Victor Masse, rue Taitbout and rue Lafitte. Showing women artists as well as men, she celebrated her 25th anniversary in 1926 when her artists held a huge fete for her at Dagorno.

Zadkine Museum, 100 bis, rue d’Assas, in the 6th arrondisment, demonstrates that even as late as the 1920’s and 1930’s there were areas of Montparnasse with real gardens, stately trees and outbuildings.  Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine constructed a folly in the backyard atelier, his sylvan corner in the middle of Montparnasse.

The neighborhood revolved around the Gare Montparnasse.  Trains departing this station headed to Brittany so it’s no surprise that the artists who lived in Montparnasse turned to the Atlantic for en plein air painting during the 1880’s and afterwards.  The Bretons and other western country people brought their fish and victuals to the city.  Bistro de la Gare, 59 Blvd. Montparnasse dates to that time period, with Art Nouveau features that gave it a place on the historic monuments registry.

 

Montmartre Up :: Pigalle Down

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Posted by in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France

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Throughout the Belle Epoque, Pigalle, the neighborhood at the foot of Montmarte hill,

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautred, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

was the place to go for cheap nightlife. Pigalle and Montmartre still have a reputation for providing any kind of excitement for hire.

Back then the village was a mix of local folks and artists, writers and noisy upstarts who wrote poetry or music or manifestos.  The lot of them were anarchists to the bourgeois. Down on the streets of Pigalle or high up on Montmartre, the artists’ eccentric behavior, erratic hours and street parties were tolerated, even encouraged.  Who was to stop them, anyway?

Gaining definition after the Revolution, Montmartre was created a jurisdiction in 1790 with 400 residents. By 1857 there were 36,000 citizens in the village and it was annexed by Paris three years later, in 1860. Baron Haussmann’s grand boulevards opened the densely populated urban areas of the city below and made public transit feasible. But the steep hill of Montmartre  remained relatively untouched until construction on Sacre-Coeur Basilica began in 1875. The economic constraints and political disarray left after the Franco-Prussion War and the Paris Commune in 1871 played a role in slowing down the hell-bent passions of artists lured to Montmartre.  Later in the 20th century, after World War II, visitors to the massive Basilica with the striking mosque-like towers and bulbous white dome spilled into the artist’s quarter of Montmarte, bringing the by-products of tourism with them.

The streets were narrow and twisting, lined with worker’s houses and small shops. Even today, Montmarte’s alleys and streets defy a grid system, curving to fit topography or the clusters of former farm houses. The neighborhood was changed radically by the end of the first world war when the cathedral was completed.

Artists and budding photographers searched for village characters as subjects. Montmarte magnified the simple country life with the noble windmills and rustic villagers. Above the city, away from the bourgeoisie,  Montmarte also  embraced 19th century sexual libertine mores in the free-wheeling cabarets filled with comely jeune filles.

In Hippolyte Bayard’s photographs, the most extensive visual record of mid-19th century Montmarte available, the windmills dominate the horizon. Green patches are squeezed between rustic shuttered houses, shops and music halls. Laundry hangs out of upper windows. The white dust from the quarry covers the cobblestones.

To follow the footsteps of the 19th and early 20th century artists in Montmarte, start at the vineyard, rue des Saules and rue St. Vincent. The same vines were there when Vincent Van Gogh trudged up the hill to his favorite dance hall in the rue Rustique. And when the dwarf legged Toulouse-Lautrec stumbled along, tapping his cane on the paving stones, ears filled with brassy cabaret notes of the Moulin de la Galette or the Moulin Rouge, the scent of the sweating can-can girls in his nose.  A plaque in the vineyard honors Poulbot (1879-1946) who painted the children who tended the vines.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/67.187.108

Paris Nightclub scene by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec

Push open the door at 22, rue de Saules. Imagine the racket at the Lapin Agile a hundred years ago! Glasses clink, palms slap wooden tables, hoots of laughter, songs born in a surfeit of drink and rebellion.  And what a mix of languages – French, Italian, English, German, Catalan, Dutch, Russian.

Inside, Andre Gill decorated the walls with paintings and posters about the crimes of Troppman, a Second Empire renegade, who became a popular hero.  Outside, the old sign of an amusing rabbit jumping into a cookpot and holding a bottle of wine has endured till this day. With so many writers and artists, some of whom called themselves the Apaches in sympathy with Native Americans, with brilliant wordsmiths like Verlaine and Rimbaud hanging out there, we can assume jokes and stories flew fast.  Huddled at a corner table, they might kid the barmaid: Was the owner Madame Adele,  Monsieur Gill’s agile rabbit, or he, her’s?

Aristide Bruant, the innovative singer, journalist, publisher and activist, bought the cabaret in 1903.  Not long afterwards, customers flocked to Lapin Agile from Cabaret Zut in neighboring Place Emile Goudeau, Bruant also persuaded the famous Frede away from Zut to work at the Lapin Agile.   The artists frequented places where they knew they could speak freely and run a line of credit.

The Bateau-Lavoir, which burned in 1970, but has been restored, contained several artists’ studios.  Picasso, Brraque, Gris and others worked there and the site is considered the birthplace of Cubism.  Picasso and his Spanish friends and anarchists carried on the boho tradition in Montmartre until WWI with a cast of characters that included the writers Max Jacob and Apollinaire.  Early in his career, Picasso painted on the walls of Lapin Agile; did he talk the owner into settling a bar bill with a mural?

Artists met their models through their friends and congregated in the guinguettes and cafes.  An enterprising young lady in need of employment might plant herself in a cafe and ‘interview’ prospective employers.

One such mademoiselle was Suzanne Valadon, a part time model beginning to try her hand at painting. Suzanne cut a unique path through the established method of learning to paint; she did not hunch over a palate in the Louvre copying the canvases of great painters past. Following her instincts, she developed a strong individual hand. Degas admired her early drawings and the two artists became life-long friends.

Valadon had been an acrobatic dancer, but a fall that injured her back cut short that career. Her first serious modeling assignment was for Puvis de Chavannes. Work with Renoir followed. Both met her at the Cabaret des Assassins (later, the Lapin Agile).

Maurice Utrillo Tomb, St. Vincent Cemetery, Montmartre

Maurice Utrillo Tomb, St. Vincent Cemetery, Montmartre

Valadon herself was a child of Montmartre and grew up on Blvd. Rochechouart. Crossing Montmartre to see friends, visit her studio, buy food and supplies, sometimes she took the quickest route and cut through the small Cemetery of St. Vincent where her artist son Maurice Utrillo would be buried in 1955.

Montmartre’s church of St. Peter, at Place du Tertre, founded as a monastery during the Middle Ages, has a cornerstone laid in 1133 by Dame Adelaide of Savoie, Queen of France and wife of King Louis VI. Over the centuries, the church has been a Benedictine Abbey and a parish church. Architectural enrichments include Roman columns, remnants from a temple that likely once graced the site, vaulting from the 1400’s and Romanesque walls with stained glass windows. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is believed to have vowed to create the order while in this church. A tile plaque near the entrance honors “Notre Dame de Montmartre, Notre Dame de Beaute, patronne des artistes.”

The church holds much of Suzanne Valadon’s history. Like many French women of her time and class, she was seriously devout and attended mass daily during the last decades of her life. Her funeral procession left from St. Peter’s.

Whatever her early indiscretions, Valadon drank deeply of life’s pleasures and used her talents wisely. Through the early years of the 20th century, mother and son lived in rue Tourlaque where Toulouse-Lautrec had a studio for some time.  Some say the Toulouse-Lautrec and Valadon were lovers, more likely they were devoted friends.

Antique postcard of 12 rue Cortot, Montmartre.

Antique postcard of 12 rue Cortot, Montmartre.

By the mid 1920’s, Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon, and the rest of their family lived at 12 rue Cortot, now the Museum of Montmartre.  Paintings and memorabilia in the museum show the life of an artist in the quarter and especially as it played out in cafes and cabarets.

Many artists lived or worked at 12 rue Cortot over the decades, including Renoir and Emile Bernard and later, the fauvist painter Raoul Dufy.  Emile Bernard never achieved the popularity or fame of his colleagues, though he started painting under Fernand Cormon’s direction and befriended Gauguin and Van Gogh. Emile Bernard painted with Gauguin during the summer of 1886 in Pont-Aven, Brittany and with Van Gogh the following year at Asnieres where Van Gogh took a studio.

Place du Tertre, Montmartreen.wikipedia.com

Place du Tertre, Montmartre
en.wikipedia.com

By the early decades of the 1900’s, the artists and writers had expanded their turf, and many shifted to Montparnasse. Bohemian Montmarte of the 1920’s continued the libertine tradition.  Artists still worked there because even into the 1960’s, Montmarte rooms were cheap, an artist’s urban paradise.  Radical innovators from all over the globe flocked to Paris, every artist’s hometown.

Behind this simacrulum of artists at work there are remnants of the history of artists who once lived in Montmarte.  The rents are far too steep for artists to live or work there now.  And the vendors at the easles in Place du Tetre are mostly just window-dressing to create an artistic atmosphere to please the tourists.

Walking Resources – Map of Montmartre

Footsteps of the Artists :: Kandinsky

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Posted by in Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Paris, Study Art in France

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Vassily Kandinsky

Born in Moscow in 1866,  Vassilly Kandinsky  (also spelled Wassilly) was raised in comfort and educated to be a lawyer. After practicing law for a few years, Kandinsky started painting at age 30 and pursued art as his passion thereafter.

In Russia up until death of Lenin, artists enjoyed favored status. Creativity was encouraged. Artists produced and their ranks multiplied. Kandinsky’s wild images were strange and wondrous, pushing the use of color to expand consciousness. Much beloved by those who knew him during his lifetime, Kandinsky was a  visionary artist with a global audience for his paintings which are in museum and private collections around the world.

Kandinsky read the occult teachers popular in the early 20th century.  He synthesized evolving precepts of anti-materialism and creativity into his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art published in 1910.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art
by V. Kandinsky

Vassily Kandinsky and his wife Nina moved to Paris in 1933, he came as an exile who’d lost his professorship in Munich after the Nazis closed the school.  They also revoked his German citizenship acquired in 1927.

 

 

 

Vassilly and Nina Kandinsky settled in suburban Neuilly-sur-Seine on the sixth floor of a building overlooking the river.

Early 20th c. view of Paris
Neuilly-sur-Seine in distance

This was the era when Paris warmly welcomed refugees from other parts of Europe and beyond. Foreign artists included: Miro,  Mondrian, Max Ernst, Brancusi, Rivera and many others.

 

 

They lived near the Bois de Boulogne with a view of Mont Valerien. After Liberation Day in 1945, the Mont Valerien property became a monument to those who were executed for work in the French underground resistance to Nazi occupation.

– Bois de Boulogne, Paris 1925

The Russian-French designer Sonia Delaunay and her husband Charles Delaunay were friendly colleagues of the Kandinskys.  Fernand Leger and Jean Arp were also part of their circle, though Leger spent the World War II years teaching at Yale. Kandinsky liked to vacation at Cauterets in the Hautes-Pyrenees.

Kandinsky Color Study

For Kandinsky, the stateless citizen who fled to Paris, success and appreciation came during his lifetime.  There were exhibitions in 1936, 1939, and 1942 at the Gallery Jeanne Bucher.  Nina Kandinsky dubbed 1934-1944 “the years of synthesis”.

The artist became a French citizen in 1939 and died in 1944.  A school in Neuilly-sur-Seine bears his name.  Kandinsky is buried at New Communal Cemetery, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
References

* Hilton Kramer on Kandinsky in Paris, The New Criterion, April 1985.

* Francois Le Targat,  Kandinsky, Rizzoli, 1987.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Auvers-sur-Oise

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Posted by in Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, France Travel, Paris

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Auvers-sur-Oise and region.

 

Auvers, a village north west of Paris on the Oise River, attracted numerous artists during the latter part of the 19th c.  The town is probably most famous as the site for Vincent Van Gogh’s final burst of creativity and death.

Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t the only painter who lived and worked in Auvers.  Situated just 30 kms.  from Paris, Auvers offered exceptional diversity of scenes, light and atmosphere.  What a surprise of real countryside with light playing on the fields and water, fog and movement on the river, thatch roof cottages, stone houses, fields, animals, and rutted roads.In 1849 the railroad came, making Auvers less than 1 hour travel time from Gare du Nord.  Sundays brought the great exodus — artists and writers scrammed out of town.  Plenty of other folks did too.

Paintings by artists who lived and worked in Auvers hang in museum collections around the world, from the Metropolitan in NYC and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, to  Musee de la Chartreuse, Musee de Pontoise, the Basel Museum and National Gallery of Prague.  Paintings created in Auvers are also featured in private collections.

The influx of artists might have started during the summer of 1854 when Corot and Daubigny painted together at Auvers. Dabigny bought land there in 1860.

In 1873 Paul Cezanne and Hortense, his companion, moved into a house close to Dr. Gachet’s in Auvers.  Cezanne continue to live and work there in 1874.  A decade earlier, Daubigny had helped Pissarro enter the Salon of 1864.  His children Karl and Cecile were friends of the painters and became painters themselves.  Berthe Morisot admitted to the Salon the same year with “An Old Road at Auvers.”

Daubigny continued to help artists promote their work.  He championed Renoir who was denied admission to the Salon in 1866 and  Pissarro (denied in 1867), as well as other painters.  Monet, Pissaro and Daubigny were refuges together in London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  They were in contact with Durand Ruel Gallery who sold works by Corot and Daubigny.

Pissarro lived in Pontoise and was considered a God-father to Gaugin and Cezanne. The three artists are buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris:  J-B Corot in 1875, Daubigny in 1876 and Daumier in 1879.

April 1887 marked the first impressionist group show in Paris. Pissaro organized (along with Monet, Degas, Guillaumin, Morisot, Sisley and others) the “Society Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs” for seven impressionist shows held during a span of 12 years.

Other Auvers painters whose names are not so current in the popular mind include: Charles Beauverie, Octave Linet lived in Eragny and painted in Auvers. Giran Max.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 21, 1890 and worked with fury:  70 days and 70 paintings. Treasuring the self-portrait he’d one in St. Remy where he rested in a hospital, Van Gogh brought the portrait to Auvers and kept in his room at Auberge Ravoux.  Visitors can see Van Gogh’s garret and the Auberge serves perhaps the best lunch in town.
Wander around the town on foot to appreciate the intimacy of the neighborhood.  Stand in the same spots where Van Gogh studied the landscape and whipped paintings out of his soul Auvers.  Trek up to the church to pay homage at the small cemetery and leave a pebble on a tombstone.
A Japanese design influence on Van Gogh’s technique is suggested in the paintings of Dr. Gachet’s house.   Daubigny’s Garden, one of three versions of this garden painted by Van Gogh, hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

He wrote to his brother:  “There are many private homes and modern, middle-class dwellings which are very pleasant, sunny and filled with flowers. And this in a countryside that is almost plump.  Right at present the development of a new society amidst the old is not at all disagreeable.  There’s quite an aura of well-being.  Calm, just like at Puvis de Chavannes…no factories, only beautiful greenery, abundant and well-kept.” Letter to Theo and Jo, his brother and sister in law, late May, 1890.

The big change for Van Gogh was painting in open air.  Painting ordinary nature not idealized classically composed scenes.  He painted peasants doing vernacular chores.  The paintings described a moment of light with a  balance of mass and movement.

Van Gogh discovered emotion in human faces, cut through pretense to feeling.  He reveled in color and defined brushstrokes.

Vincent Van Gogh never left Auvers-sr-Oise.  He is buried alongside his brother Theo in the Auvers churchyard, a short walk from town.

Vincent Van Gogh’s tombstone.

Reference:

Auvers or The Painter’s Eye

Maire-Paule Defossez

Translated: Patricia Wallace Costa

Paris: Editions der Valhermeil, 1986.