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Footsteps of the Artists

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Art Students and Collectors in Paris

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Posted by patwa in American Artists in France, Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Normandy, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France, Women in Paris

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19th c., 20th c., Alice B. Toklas, Americans in Paris, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, cafe-life, Gertrude Stein, Montparnasse, poets, Sarah Stein, Women in Paris, Yves Klein

Art Students in Paris During the Golden Age

During the later decades of the 19th century and into the 20th century, Americans made up the largest group of foreigners studying art in Paris.  They worked with the academic painters and sculptors, learning classical style.  Generally, they did not study with the Impressionists.  During the 1890s, hundreds of Americans exhibited in the annual Salons where they competed favorably gaining medals and sales.Woman's Art Journal cover image

The American Art Association or Club provided lodgings for visiting artists in an old school building at 131 Blvd. du Montparnasse with a garden that was also used for stables. Over the decades, the Art Association bounced around Montparnasse to various locations. The next was 82 rue Notre Dame des Champs. In 1897 it relocated to Number 2 Impasse Conti.  By 1906 the association moved to 74 rue Notre Dame des Champs and in 1909 to the rue Jaseph Bara.  It closed in the early 1930s.  There were other facilities that specialized in housing visiting American art students near the various art academies.

Unclothed woman posing for art class.

Women’s art class with female model. École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

The American’s Girls’ Club at 4 rue de Chevreuse in the 6th Arr. opened in 1893. The boarding house provided meals, French lessons and social activities for young American women in Paris to study art.  Académie Vitti, 49 Blvd. du Montparnasse,  admitted women and included naked male models in life studies classes, unusual at the time.  F. W. MacMonnies, Whistler’s earlier studio partner, taught at Académie Vitti.

John Singer Sargent‘s studio was decorated to replicate a grand salon with hardwood floors, elaborate fireplace mantels and masses of expensive textiles.  But it was a rented property at 41 Blvd. Berthier, not his own asset.  The scandal attached to his portrait of the grand lady in black with all the skin exposed discouraged conservative patrons.  Sargent moved to England and continued his career as a society portrait painter.

Gertrude Stein in Paris

The Stein siblings — Gertrude and Leo — were living in the house-studio at 27 rue de Fleurus. Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude’s partner, moved in at a later date. Their open house parties attracted artists, writers, patrons and characters, especially Americans. Michael Stein and his wife Sarah Stein lived at 58 rue Madame where their Saturday night gatherings cultivated a salon scene.  All the Steins bought up paintings by Paul Cèzanne, Renoir, Gauguin.  Michael and Sarah were soon onto Matisse, who was supported by them and persuaded by Sarah Stein to open an art school.  Leo was more conservative in building his art collection.  Gertrude Stein focused her collecting efforts on Picasso.

The public garden Square Yves Klein at the southern end of rue Campagne Premiére honors the intense post-WWII modernist who experimented with a particular blue color that bears his name, International Klein Blue.  During the artist’s short, active career, his studio was at 9 rue Campagne Premiére, later becoming number 24.

Yves Klein's hand is International Blue Klein

Yves Klein’s right hand is the color he invented International Blue Klein.

Born in 1928 in Nice, Yves Klein started out in the martial arts, earning the highest honor in judoka and lived in Japan for more than a year. He worked hard and died young of a heart attack on June 6, 1962 aged 34.

 Nearby:

Theatre Lucernaire – 53 rue Notre Dame des Champs, 75006 Paris.  Art house theater, cafe and exhibition space.

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Brothels and Dance Halls :: A Walk On the Steamy Side of Art

Friday, February 1, 2013

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Writers in Italy

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art studios in Paris, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, people-watching, Toulouse-Lautrec, walk in Paris

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

Paris Nightclub scene by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec

No walk through the artist’s Montmartre would be complete without mentioning the louche side. Along with the tax free drinking, brothels catering to every combination and whimsy dotted the streets around Place Blanche, Pigalle, and Montmartre. Not much has changed in the 21st century, though the tax-free status has surely vanished. Back in the day, these areas were outside of the urban center so a devil-may-care attitude towards regulatory authority prevailed.

A belle époque facade barely visible at 72, Blvd. de Rochechouart bears witness to the passions and frolics of the gay nineties. Today, that address is the L’Elysee Montmartre, nightclub.  Opened in 1881, the Chat Noir, 84 rue de Rochechouart was a favorite haunt close to the brothel at 2 rue de Steinkerque where Toulouse-Lautrec struggled with the effects of the absinthe that contributed to his deteriorating health and possibly, his early death at 36. After the last bistro closed for the morning, he would wrest a few more hours of fun sketching and painting the femmes of the night.

An industrious tramp around the area reveals only a few facades, art nouveau colored glass windows and a vintage wrought iron canopy over a doorway on rue Steinkerque, precious few traces of those earlier risque tenants. Among the cloth dealers and discount stores offering cheap household goods and shoes, it’s possible to spot some professionals, but the ostrich plumes and silk chemises worn in the opulent privacy of a brothel depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec have given way to fake fur and fishnet on the street.

Brothels are not enduring establishments, so the nightspots that provided subject matter for Toulouse-Lautrec in the rue d’Amboise or rue des Moulins,  and in rue Joubert are long gone. Toulouse-Lautrec was fond of spending time in the Lesbian bar, La Souris, in rue Breda,  now named rue Henri Menticer. His many eloquent pastels of the women are at the Musee Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, his birthplace in south-west France.

The cafe-restaurant Le Grande Pinte, at number 28, ave. Trudaine, was founded in 1879 and was a neighborhood meeting place for many artists.  It is still a restaurant, Le Paprika.  In the 1980s, the place was called La Bouche Riche; names change, but the place remains.

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

Englishman at the Moulin Rouge by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892.

When known as Le Grande Pinte, Andre Gill, Carjat and the future King Edward VII supped there and the decor simulated themes from the Middle Ages, echoing the fascination of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets for anything Medieval. The main floor of Le Grande Pinte was a cabaret founded by Laplace, a former art dealer.  For a while, the cabaret was called l’Ane Rouge.  The Prince of Wales was a frequent and dedicated visitor to the brothels in the quarter.

Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec in Place Pigalle Neighborhood

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

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

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19th century, art, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, walk in Paris

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 patwa 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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art, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, people-watching, poets, Renoir, walk in Paris

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.

 

Footsteps of the Artists: Mary Blume Observes

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Shopping in Paris

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artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, cafe-life, design, feminists, people-watching, poets, Renoir, walk in Paris

Paris Travel notes from:  A French Affair by Mary Blume

When I read this charming book about living in France years ago, I scribbled a page of notes on places and people covered in her book that I’d like to know more about.  Though Blume was a Paris-based correspondent a while ago,  the subjects are timeless. I found contemporary information online for all the topics in my notes.

http://www.amazon.ca/French-Affair-Mary-Blume/dp/0452282039

A French Affair by Mary Blume

Down and Out in Paris?

Soupe Populaire on Rue Clément, near Mabillon metro, is a  cafeteria for the poor,  the homeless, vagabonds, nomads and those who can make a small donation. 

Places to Go

A vineyard still exists in Montmartre at Clos Montmartre.  And there are other wine makers growing the grapes in the city for micro production.  The wine  sold at Cafe Mélac, 42 Rue León Frot comes from grapes produced by vines embracing the bistro.   Jacques Mélac is the proprietor who makes Paris-grown wine with the “Château-Charonne” label.

La Balajo – Founded in 1936, it was once a bal-musette / apache bar, then a nighclub where Edith Piaf sang.  Then it became a disco at  9,  rue de Lappe near Bastille.

Paris Shopping Tips

* Dehillerin for the best selection of kitchen utensils.

* Madeleine Gely for umbrellas, Blvd. St. Germain.  Now owned by a different family than the founder, but dedicated to the same principles of quality and service.

* Tang Brothers, in 7 locations, are comprehensive, immense Asian supermarkets.

Some Parisian Creatives

Classic Vionnet bias cut draped dress.

Classic Vionnet bias cut draped dress.

Mme. Madeleine Vionnet invented the bias cut clothing trend in the 1920s, freeing women from corsets and constriction. Her fashion design atelier began on rue de Rivoli in 1912.  She moved the company Vionnet to ave. Montaigne later. During the 1930s, she dressed Dietrich, Garbo and Hepburn. Several declines and revivals followed, the most recent in 2009.

Thérèse Bonney was an American photographer who was an

Thérèse Bonney, American photo-journalist during WWII in France.

Thérèse Bonney, American photo-journalist during WWII in France.

active photo-journalist during World War II and lived in Paris until her death in 1978.  She documented the impact of war on children and women, sneaking into the countryside to report the horror of war.  Bonney said: “I go forth alone, try to get the truth and then bring it back and try to make others face it and do something about it.”

Painter Auguste Renoir is well known, but his model Jeanne Samary is not so famous.

Jeanne Samary, actress and artist's model. Portrait by Félix Nadar, 1877.

Jeanne Samary, actress and artist’s model. Portrait by Félix Nadar, 1877.

He painted her often between 1877-1880 while she sought publicity to advance her acting career.  A decade later, Renoir married Aline Victorine Charigot in 1890, with whom he had already had one child prior to Jean, who was born in a stone house in Montmartre, near Sacre-Coeur Basilica, which wasn’t yet completed in 1894.  Jean Renoir, the son, directed films and for a long time lived on a hidden, tree lined street in Pigalle against the blackened remains of wall between the old boundaries of Paris and the open hunting grounds of Montmartre. He died in Los Angeles in 1979.

Toulouse-Lautrec in Montmartre

Saturday, September 22, 2012

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

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19th century, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, Degas, design, feminists, painting, people-watching, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Valadon, walk in Paris

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

Englishman at the Moulin Rouge by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, along with Maurice Utrillo, is the epitome of a Montmartre artist. He is identified with the lifestyle and painted the scenes and people that are icons of  Montmartre. He drowned his health in the pleasurable toxins so readily available in Montmartre.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithograph posters, paintings, pastels and drawings depict the dance hall girls, the chanteuses, the whores and waiters and their customers, the haute bourgeois or visitors from more tightly laced societies like England and the United States.

Breaking away from his colleagues, Toulouse-Lautrec honed his drawing skills and pioneered innovative techniques using empty space, color and stark lines, as bold as the subjects he followed so closely.  He loved the performers, the dancers, prostitutes and pleasure prowlers of the belle epoque.

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

Paris Nightclub scene by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec

Early in his career he studied with other young artists with Fernand Cormon in the Cormon’s atelier-school at 10 rue Constance.  He met artist Louis Anquetin, who was interested in subjects that attracted Toulouse-Lautrec.

For a while, Toulouse-Lautrec lived at 19, bis rue Fontaine with Rene Grenier and Lily Grenier, a model for Edgar Degas who had a studio in the same building. The courtyard at 19 is still bathed in sunlight and there is a line of low studio rooms on the left. No official plaque reports that Toulouse‑ Lautrec and the Grenier couple lived there, however.

In 1887, Toulouse-Lautrec left Cormon’s instruction and took his own space at 27 rue Caulaincourt where Dr. Henri Bourges, a childhood friend, lived. Toulouse-Lautrec stayed with him until the doctor married in 1893.  A few years later, when Toulouse-Lautrec’s health was clearly declining, his mother rented an apartment in Rue de Douai to give him a proper home.

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

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

At number 30, rue Fontaine, not far from the Grenier residence, Toulouse-Lautrec rented a room in 1896 while he painted in a studio at rue Tourlaque shared with Suzanne Volquin. The crumbling facade at  number 30 would have been a bourgeoisie building at that time.   The Academy Julian was founded in 1868 by painter Rodolphe Julian, and the first to permit women as students. American impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry and Russian-born Marie Bashkirtseff were students.

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.

Toulouse-Lautrec shifted his attention to the Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, when the can‑can became all the rage in the 1890’s. Dozens of can-can dancers still kick up a storm on the Moulin Rouge stage, billed as the “greatest cabaret in the world.”

Louise Colet: Rage and Fire

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists Near Paris, France Travel, Hotels in Paris, Normandy, Paris, Provence, Writers in France, Writers in Italy

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19th century, artist cafes, feminists, poets, writers

Rage and Fire: A Life of Louise Colet

Pioneer Feminist, Literary Star, Flaubert’s Muse.

Francine du Plessix Gray, Simon & Schuster,  1994.

Louise Colet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Colet

Who was Louise Colet?  Close friend, muse and lover of one of France’s greatest novelists — Gustave Flaubert.  But  long before she met Flaubert, she was a highly productive poet and essayist, a feminist dedicated to fighting for equal rights for women and honored by the Académie Française.  She is usually described in the context of her friendship with  Gustave Flaubert and billed as his muse.  Yet, it is important to remember that when the writers met, she was the celebrated one, a 36-year-old self-supporting poet honored by the Académie,  while he was an unpublished 24-year-old aspiring novelist who lived with his mother in the country.

Gustave Flaubert
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki

Louise Colet developed into a scathing political satirist, dedicated to supporting the mid – 19th century drive for liberty and justice.  Decades after the American and French Revolutions which certainly jolted the aristocratic land-owning class, representative governance and human legal equality were still a distant dream for most people.   The “trickle down” factors of economic equity, universal suffrage and political liberty  were  still being hammered out in North America and Europe.  The idea that human rights and political equality and legal independence applied to women was hardly a view shared by men of the era.  In this time period the people of many European countries pushed for democracy, labor and voting rights, legal equity and individual liberty.  And so were Americans seeking civil justice, an end to slavery, voting rights for women and poor people who were excluded from participating in elections.

To follow the footsteps of Louise Colet, go to Provence, to Mouriès, the village near Servanes.  The Hostellerie de Servanes is the ancestral estate where Louise Révoil grew up.  Born in Aix-en-Provence, east of Servanes, Louise’s maternal family were local gentry with generations serving in the Parliament of Provence.  Her father, from the merchant class, was head of the local postal system.  She learned quite naturally to align herself with the people’s causes and in strictly divided class-conscious Aix, Louise’s aristocrat mother  directed her family to walk on the side of the promenade for ordinary people rather than the elite side of the Cours Mirabeau, the “see and be scene” promenade in Aix, even though they were certainly entitled to walk with the local aristocracy.  The Fonds Louise Colet, her papers and other archival material from Louise Colet ‘s life and work,  is housed in the Médiathèque Ceccano section of the Bibliotheque Municipale d’Avignon.

The Musée Calvet in Avignon preserves Colet memorabilia, according to the acknowledgements in du Plessix Gray’s book, but I was not able to successfully search for items related  to Louise Colet using the search function on the museum website.  It’s likely material related to Louise Colet would be in a museum archive or library, rather than part of the collection on view digitally.

During her years in Paris, Colet lived in several different apartments,  as might be expected for a single mother supporting herself with free-lance writing and literary stipends from the government.  Louise Colet lived at 21 rue de Sèvres during the time she hosted her own literary salon, then very much in vogue.  This apartment was not far from  L’Abbaye aux Bois where Madame Récamier conducted her famous artistic and philosophical discussions until 1849.  Colet had a falling out with her friend over the usual miscommunications and misunderstandings. Colet also lived at 21 rue Neuve Fontaine Saint-Georges  (rue Fromentin).  It was in this lodging  in Montmartre where she decided to separate in 1842 after living briefly with her spouse, the musician Hippolyte Colet.

Louise Colet died March 8, 1876 in her daughter’s apartment, in the rue des Ecoles in Paris, although some books report that Colet died in a small hotel on that street.  During the previous summer in Paris, Colet’s letters of the period were written from the Hotel d’ Angleterre, Rue Jacob and the Hotel du Palais-Royal, Rue de Rivoli. Contrary to her wishes, she was buried with the Catholic Church’s ceremonial pomp that she despised, in daughter Henriette Colet Bissieu’s husband’s family plot in the municipal cemetery in Verneuil, Normandy.  The Bissieu family estate was named “Fryleuse” and is located in or near Verneuil. It is likely that  the town “Verneuil” refers to  Verneuil-sur-Avre which is in Normandy.

Beyond her writing, fired-up feminist rhetoric and long friendship with Gustave Flaubert, Louise Colet took on the Vatican and launched a public relations campaign on behalf of the mid-19th century freedom fighters Garibaldi and Cavour.

During her months in Italy, Louise Colet followed the footsteps of writers she admired, frequenting Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco, Venice and searching for the exact rooms in the Hotel Nani (later, the Hotel Danieli) where writer George Sand and her lover Alfred Musset lived and worked decades earlier in 1833-1834.

But Colet’s main mission was to shine a light on the efforts of Cavour and Garibaldi to create a unified Italy.  Their efforts to unify the fiefdoms and city-states of the Italian peninsula challenged the temporal power of the Vatican. Papal States scattered throughout the peninsula we now call Italy were gradually being brought under the unifying rule of Victor Emanuel; democratic government would follow unification.  Colet  used her considerable literary fame to seek meetings with key members of the Vatican government.

Francine du Plessix Gray writes:

“In February of 1861, after visits to Sicily that inspired many more pages of art history, Louise Colet left Naples for Rome.  Victor Emmanuel had vastly diminished the Papal States the previous autumn when he occupied the Marches and Umbria, as Garibaldi had wished to do.  The papal territory was reduced to the city of Rome, where the entrenched conservative factions had grown more bitter.  The city was rife with secret police that kept watch on antipapist elements; one of its targets, in the first months of 1861, was Louise Colet.  As soon as she had settled at the Hôtel Inghilterra – a lovely hostelry still standing today on the Via Bocca del Leone, two blocks from the Spanish Steps – she was warned by one of her compatriots, a bookstore owner, that she was under police surveillance.

The warning left her undaunted  She was determined to remain in Rome = whose antiquities thrilled her as its religious artifacts horrified her = to continue her campaign against the Catholic clergy, which she considered to be the principal enemy of human progress.

Louise’s anticlericalism was fanned by a pope who was one of the more repressive Catholic leaders of the post-Reformation era and whose pontificate was the longest in the history of the papacy  (1846 – 1878).  Although he had begun as a fairly liberal reformist, Pius IX became an arch conservative in the 1850s, when Cavour attempted to limit his temporal power.  He militantly opposed every goal of the Risorgimento, and his reign was defined by two of the most regressive encyclicals of papal history, those that set forth the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.

When she arrived in Rome, Louise immediately set off to visit the Vatican, where she assisted at a Mass officiated by Pius IX in the Sistine Chapel.  She describes the obese little Pope, his thick head doddering over a swollen neck, his muddy eyes and weak lips, his blotched red face and powdered hair, the archaic pomp with which his chair is carried into the church by fourteen papal guards.  She considered the basilica of Saint Peter a site “of glacial pomp … totally devoid of any mysticism or mystery.”  With the exception of the Pietà of Michelangelo, who “would have been a far greater artist if he had fawned less upon illiterate pontiffs,” the basilica’s “overabundance of riches” was a “a monument to hypocrisy … catering to the taste of parvenus and bankers.”

Louise was particularly disgusted with the opulent tomb of Queen Christina of Sweden – “a ruler more pagan in her mores than those of pre-Christian times” – whose recently published letters had revealed her to be “a thief, a violent, insolent and debauched strumpet.”  In the middle of Saint Peter’s, Louise shouted, “I protest this sanctification of Christina of Sweden!  As a saint,as one of the truly just, I far prefer Garibaldi!”  Her outburst terrified a priest, who took to his heels and rushed back into the depths of the basilica.

Later that month, she wrote a burlesque of a Holy Week Mass at Saint Peter’s, which re-created the Last Supper:  The Holy Father himself served food to the thirteen beggars who were seated at the table as stand-ins for Christ and his apostles.  At the end of the liturgy, a few seconds after the Pope had left the church, a group of fat monks rushed to the altar, chased out the beggars, and stuffed the food and wine into large baskets for their own use (Louise’s description of Rome’s decadent religious mores occasionally strain the imagination).

Visiting the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Louise was prompted to make her own profession of faith, in which she revels a nonsectarian piety.  She was, in fact, a Diest:  She believed in a Supreme Being but maintained that the truths of this “Implacable Unknown” could not be incarnated in any temporal sect or power.  Her credo was a blend of the ideologies that had influenced her since youth – her maternal grandfather’s Voltarian skepticism, Victor Cousin’s eclectic mysticism, Alfred de Vigny’s Stoicism, Victor Hugo’s catchall pantheism.

“Although I long ago left the Catholic faith [she wrote in the fourth and final volume of L’Italie des Italiens’, I enjoy meditating whenever I can in a great empty basilica.  I do not feel as much communion with  infinity there as I do when gazing on a beautiful starry night or the immensity of the ocean; but I cannot enter into one of these temples which a succession of religious sects erected to their gods without feeling a sorrowful compassion concerning our finitude.

… In our time the human soul is stifled by Catholicism, an antihuman doctrine whose architects suppressed all air and light … Liberty, Justice, Charity, Science, and Chastity have been no more than ringing words in the mouthpiece of the Church. … and  at this very hour, the forces of liberty and justice shout out against the Church through all the voices of the Italian fatherland: “Why do you deny our liberation?” ”

These are the opinions with which Louise assaulted Cardinal Antonelli, Prime Minister of the Papal States, one of the Church’s highest-ranking prelates, when she cornered him at the Vatican in an attempt to obtain an audience with the Pope.  It was a few days before her return to France, and Louise had a grand purpose in desiring to talk with the Holy Father.  She wished to convert Pius IX to the cause of Italian liberation, to the side of Garibaldi and Cavour!

Sitting so close to her that his frock touched her dress, the cardinal, who wore immense rings of square-cut emeralds, addressed Louise as “cara mia” and heard her out but was not in the least swayed.  “The Church,” he told her, “cannot recognize the people’s novel claim to emancipation, which of course is no more than the right to rape and murder.  The meaningless concepts of ‘patriotism,’ ‘liberty,’ or ‘universal suffrage’ can only be brought about by violence.”  Nor did the prelate rush to get Louise an audience with Pius.  She had given him three days to arrange the meeting, and the cardinal explained that the Holy Father did not accept ultimatums.  Thus were we deprived of a colorful episode – Louise Colet preaching revolution to the most reactionary Pope of modern times.

Louise left Rome for Paris in the spring of 1861, after a year and eight months in Italy.  She would soon grieve over Camillo Cavour, who died suddenly, at fifty-one, a few weeks after she returned to France.  But the revolutionary goals Cavour pursued had been fulfilled.  All of the Italian peninsula, with the exclusion of Rome, had voted to be annexed to Victor Emmanuel’s kingdom.  In March, at a parliamentary session in Turin, Victor Emmanuel II proclaimed the birth of a united kingdom of Italy.  …

The venom in Louise’s pen, and the biting social satire that Flaubert considered to be her greatest literary talent, increased in her later years.  “Please accept the assurance of my most perfect disdain,” she signed letters to some of her antagonists.

Source:  Gray, Francine du Plessix. (1994) Rage & Fire : A Life of Louise Colet.  New York: Simon & Schuster, pp 307-310.

Flirting in the Literary Cafes of Paris

Friday, June 15, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, France Travel, Paris, Restaurants in Paris

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artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, design, people-watching, philosophy, walk in Paris, writers

The Literary Cafes of Paris Welcome You!

Once upon a nineteenth century, the urban cafe was the place to be. Business, love, the business of love, and affairs of commerce took place in cafes, in full view of the world,  steps from the street.  Many of the cafes are enclosed now with a sound-proof glass between the cafe sitter and the exhaust fumes and passers-by. But inside, with a strong dose of imagination and a sense of history, the Parisian literary cafe mood stews the same scene.

You can sit where the greats once sipped, but to find where tomorrow’s ecrivans are penning, you have to plunge deep into la vie Boheme. Sometimes you’ll find a grimey smoke filled cafe just around the corner from the preserved banquettes that held the shanks of Fitzgerald, Miller, Nin, Flanner, Liebling or Sartre. Sometimes you’ll see a tweedy type with Hemingway’s bulk is still there, as I saw upstairs at Cafe de Flore, editing galley proofs with a fountain pen and sipping whiskey.

Interior of Le Train Bleu Restaurant
at Gare de Lyon.

During the cocktail hour at Le Train Bleu a gloriously guilt-free gilded expanse in the Gare de Lyon (20 Blvd Diderot),  people pose for each other killing time before a train departs, while covertly eyeing who is coming and going. A Japanese man dressed in a cape and suede boots converses intensely with a companion, a trio of German women dieted to fit their thigh-hugging cigarette pants tea and compare the day’s shopping victories. A Marlboro man in leather studies stocks or sports on an iPad.

Brasserie Lipp 1930s

Across town on the Left Bank, the neon and colored tubular glass signs of Brasserie Lipp advertise with jittery color. Just opposite Lipp is the Cafe de Flor, a good place to watch the passing scene sitting behind the broad glass windows.

Upstairs at Cafe Flore, away from the cafe society, a writer in tweeds sits alone and

Cafe de Flore

makes notations on book galleys with a fountain pen. He’s a throwback to the time when political writers crafted manifestos and experimental litterateurs scribbled their thoughts. To the time when Picasso doodled on matchbooks and Sartre confided his quest for a new lover to the understanding ear of Simone de Beauvoir. Cafe Flore’s menu includes sandwiches, snacks, omelettes and salads, some breakfast items, pastries and ice cream, and of course a variety of beverages, from cafe creme to a bottle of Dom Perignon.

Down at Harry’s New York Bar, sank rue Daw-Noo, (5 rue Daunou) it dosen’t take too long a leap of imagination to transform the hunched hacks at the bar into latterday Hemingways, Janet Flanners or Ben Bradlees — journalists and editors serving time in the trenches of Paris.  Pity them not.

Harry’s Bar has been a hangout for Americans in Paris for nearly a century, a place where they could feel at home, stop for a moment and toss back a bourbon or a brew.

I got there around three in the afternoon, after lunch, before the commuter crowd. Inside the curtain that screens the street, a shade of gold suffuses the room, the gold of money and wood aged by many seasons of cigarette smoke and whiskey breath. Harry’s is a bar where men can be men and women can hunt them. A long legged habitue scans the want ads in the Herald Tribune.  She could read it digitally, but where’s the atmosphere and fun in that?

At the opposite end of the limites of the downtown core is picture-perfect Place des Vosges. Said to be the oldest square in Paris, it has been restored and claimed by upscale designers. The wind is cut by the well proportioned houses that line the sides of the square. A secondary line of tended trees muffles noise froum outside the compound. Inside the square the visual range spells sophisticated life, and the calm is all encompassing.

Dozens of famous and extraordinary people have lived here. Madame de Sevigne, a writer and literary figure, was born in one house on the square. The houses on the square perimeter were residences of famous moneyed Parisians of the last century.  Victor Hugo’s house is diagonally across from Ma Bourgogne restaurant where steak and fries are menu staples.  Open every day from 8 in the morning to 1 a.m. the next morning, this is a restaurant that aims to please local sensibilities and visitors from around the planet. By 2 p.m. on a Sunday, French couples are already into their second luncheon course. Writers and students sit outside nursing a pot of tea and reading in the pale winter light reflected in the bleached red brick.

Hotel Sully
1901

Hotel Sully, a grand historic mansion, anchors one corner of Place de Vogues. Vaulted passages around the square shelter galleries, offices and ateliers of famous designers.

Le Procope Restaurant

The oldest surviving and active cafe in Paris is Le Procope (13 rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie).  The tracks of time and re-decoration may have made the restaurant-cafe more polished and slick than when Benjamin Franklin hung out there with his liberty-loving friends.

The cafe is still a place to pause and contemplate the world gone by, to write about it or just stare at the passing scene. People also pass time sitting in cafes to be seen, to feel part of the background life of a city, no longer a tourist or visitor.  The ticket for a seat at the edge of the world’s stage with a front row view costs only the price of a decently pulled espresso.

Address Book:

Le Train Bleu, inside Gare de Lyon, 20 Blvd. Diderot, Metro: Gare de Lyon.

Harry’s New York Bar, 5 rue Daunou, Metro: Opera.

Ma Bourgogne, 19 Place des Vosges, Metro: St. Paul.

Cafe de Flore, 172 Blvd. St. Germain, Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres.

Brasserie Lipp, 151 Blvd. St. Germain, Metro: St.Germain-des-Pres.

Le Procope, 13 rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie,  Metro: Odeon.

Literary Cafes :: Cafe de la Paix

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Posted by patwa in France Travel, Paris, Restaurants in Paris

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artist cafes, walk in Paris, writers

Cafe de la Paix, 5 Place de l’Opera.

Metro: Opera

Cafe de la Paix Coaster.

Well dressed, well preserved matrons meet each other for tea at tables facing the Paris Opera. Suave men of a certain age hide behind Le Monde or their iPads and eye the mirrored reflections of the sleek young genderless. The afternoon crowd at Cafe de la Paix is so discreet as it checks out who is sipping and sitting with or without whom.

If Booth Tarkington or Henry James edged through the palm trees, faux marble tables and rattan chairs today, hardly anyone would notice. Today, just as during the Belle Epoque a hundred years ago, the clientele is successful and civilized. But the beauty of a Paris cafe is that even shaggy-haired artistes can feel comfortable, as long as they can afford something from the menu.

The decore is muted gilt with pairs of cherubs at the corners so it looks like a Baroque church. And Cafe de la Paix is, in a way, an elegant temple to the gentele ways of time standing, or sitting, still. Near the staircase that leads to the W.C., there was once a small desk where a rubber stamp of the Cafe’s logo could be used to decorate postcards or a travel notebook. Tea and a waistline challenging pastry probably cost more than a sandwich and a beer. Service is included.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Auvers-sur-Oise

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

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

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art history, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, driving tours, Vincent Van Gogh

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.

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