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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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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.

Montmartre Up :: Pigalle Down

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Posted by patwa 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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art studios in Paris, beatniks, bohemia, cafe-life, design, Dufy, painting, people-watching, poets, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Valadon, Vincent Van Gogh, walk in Paris, writers

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

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.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Impressionists in Paris

Sunday, May 27, 2012

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

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art, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, philosophy, walk in Paris, writers

Passageway to hidden artists’ studios in Paris.
© L Peat O’Neil

 

Footsteps of the Impressionists in Paris


Montmartre

Vincent Van Gogh lived in Paris at 56 rue Lepic, from 1886 to 1888 with his brother Theo.  He painted rooftop scenes from that room and also painted at a friend’s studio, 10 rue Constance.

Sink into the slightly seedy atmosphere of a bohemian artist’s bistro at Au Virage Lepic,  61 rue Lepic. This bar/restaurant is run with an off-hand nonchalance that suggests the boozy haunts of more than a long century ago that attracted Toulouse-Lautrec and other artists to Montmartre. Arrive after late for dinner, or in the morning for a wake-up glass of red.  A group of Parisian mates and I dined there in the mid 1980s. I’m cheered to see the bistro continues to prosper.

Tattered posters cover walls dimmed yellow by clouds of cigarette smoke. Rules about smoking in Montmartre’s restaurants and bars may have changed during the 21st century.  The chef at Au Virage Lepic relies on grilled meat and fried potatoes, timeless staples that no doubt nourished Vincent and Theo Van Gogh and their pals. Late in the evening a chanteuse drops by to pay homage to Edith Piaf.

Luxembourg Gardens

Ponies awaiting riders outside Luxembourg Gardens.
© L Peat O’Neil

While he lived in the Luxembourg quarter, James McNeill Whistler strolled rue Notre Dame des Champs and at sundown, modern pedestrians evoke his vague street scenes with daubs of colorful clothing on a grey dusk background. When he returned to Paris from London in 1892, Whistler painted in a studio on the sixth floor at 86 rue Notre Dame des Champs. The building cornerstone is dated 1880, so it was relatively new when Whistler leased space.  The exterior is painted pale peach with white trim.

Whistler’s aura lives in the building where his British pals — dubbed the “Paris Gang” — had studios in the building at 53 Notre Dame des Champs and Jamie Whistler, the expat American,  was a frequent visitor. Today, the building is called Lucernaire and serves as an arts center, with cinema, theaters, galleries and cafes. Lucernaire was founded by Christian Le Guillochet and Luce Berthomme for actors, writers and cinematographers during the 1960s to reanimate the French cafe-theater movement.

Montparnasse

Art Studios known as La Ruche or Beehive.
© L Peat O’Neil

At 8 rue de la Grands-Chaumiere, off rue Notre Dame des Champs, a brass plate marks Atelier Modigliani, the artist’s last studio. “Modi”, as his colleagues called him, lived and worked there until friends transported him to the charity hospital at 47 rue Jacob where he died a couple of days later from tuberculosis January 24, 1920.

Gauguin also lived and worked in that building and next door, at number 6, a classic artist’s studio with wrought iron art nouveau windows in the style favored at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.

Other remarkable people called this area their own. The literary critic and cultural historian Charles Sainte-Beuve lived at 19 rue Notre Dame des Champs while befriending Victor Hugo’s family who lived at number 11, decades before the Impressionists and their contemporaries arrived in the neighborhood.  Dozens of other artists worked in the area which makes an interesting walk from Metro station Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

Though only 137 meters long, rue Grands Chaumiere was an artists’ street throughout the 19th century and retains its reputation for its fine art schools, student residences, studios and painter’s supply stores. Restaurant Wadja, next to Atelier Modigliani exudes arty atmosphere.

Both Gauguin and Rousseau painted at studios in the Montparnasse neighborhood, but few vestiges of the artistic life endure. A meagerly stocked art supply store that I noted in 1988 at 26 rue Vercingetorix, not far from Paul Gauguin’s studio at number 6, is a decorator’s shop in the shadow of high rise towers like most of the neighborhood. Nearby at number 2 rue Penrel, Henri Rousseau lived for years, but street widening swept away his cottage and the lane is now part of a children’s playground.

Notre Dame du Travail

In the shadows of these pale post-modern office buildings is a unique church, Notre Dame du Travail de Plaisance at 59 rue Vercingetorix. Exposed iron girders like those used by Gustave Eiffel for his tower, replace the masonry buttresses one expects in a gothic style church. Instead of the usual painted images of saints on the chapel walls, the inspirational figures are white washed and decorated with art nouveau borders, like the edges of a page.

Latin Quarter

Artists have long been associated with the left bank and Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne and l’École des Beaux-Arts. Picasso lived and worked at 7 rue Grands-Augustins from 1936 until 1955. He painted his mural “Guernica” there. A plaque on the wall proclaims his tenancy. The house is within a minutes’ walk of rue Christine where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas lived at number 5 where ivy covers the square pillar at the base of the stairs, obscuring the house number. When my father studied and worked in Paris after the Liberation of France in 1945, he and other Army chaps paid homage at the Stein-Toklas house.

Picasso’s Barcelona heritage is reflected in the Catalan bookstore that anchored rue des Grands Augustins where it intersects rue St. Andre des Arts for decades. As the neighborhood has experienced an influx of upmarket tenants, the bookstore faced closure with a brave face. Picasso is said to have enjoyed the fare at the restaurant Jacques Cogna, 14 Grandes Augustins, which is still in business in the 21st century.  Browse the used bookstores along rue St. Andre des Arts.

Todays posers and painters may drink at Bar Mazet, 61 Rue St. Andre des Arts, which was a rough and tumble cafe and beer-hall in the early 1990s and is now an Irish sports pub.  Or, head around the corner to  23 rue de l’Ancienne Comedie which was once the Relais Odeon, but in its 21st century incarnation is a fancy bakery.

In the heart of the busy, golden Blvd. Saint Germain, Café de Flore was Picasso’s hangout, along with distinguished writers and intellectuals of the late 1920s and 30s. Sartre and de Beauvoir wrote and played footsie there. One can assume that Picasso doodled on menus or matchbooks and Hemingway plotted conquests.  The waiters are consummate professionals; show your sophistication with humility for the grand tradition.

Also on the left bank, the rue de l’École de Medecine still exists, but a textbook store and part of the medical school claim the space that was once Brasserie Andler at 24-30 rue de l’École de Medecine, where during the last two decades of the 19th century, Courbet, Baudelaire, Corot and the older impressionist painters and symbolist writers congregated and traded toasts. Painter Rosa Bonheur lived at number 24 from 1864 to 1866.

Right Bank

Though not part of the Impressionist Movement, Eugene Delicroix developed a painting style that evoked light and movement through innovative brushwork and a complex color palette. The Delicroix Museum at 6 rue de Furstenberg facing a calm residential courtyard, is a gem of a small museum preserved by the Musees Nationaux. The painter’s house and studio are open for view and an array of his works are displayed.

In the posh area near the Champs Elysee, the American painter Mary Cassatt lived on the fifth floor at 10 rue de Marignan, a quiet side street. The fifth floor is at the top level of the building. Twentieth century tenants include a life insurance company and a gynecologist’s office.

In the fashionable 16th arrondissement, painter Berthe Morisot and her husband Eugene Manet, brother of painter Edouard Manet, built the house at 40 rue Paul Valery, known as rue de Villejust before 1945. In her diary, their daughter Julie Manet records the frequent visits of other impressionist artists — Degas, Claude Monet, Renoir and others.

Le Bal Mabile painted by Jean Beraud

The public dance halls and outdoor dancing parks such as Bal Mabille provided artists their choice of comely models.  They picked up dancers to be pose for them, and some became their companions. For 2 francs entrance fee, people could dance the waltz, quadrilles, mazurkas and polkas.  Toulouse-Lautrec was fond of painting the dance hall girls and singers at Thermes Saint Honore, which, alas, was destroyed.

In the Odeon neighborhood, Cafe Voltaire is history. In Montmartre, the country lanes Renoir, Gauguin and Van Gogh strolled are trimmed and paved. Montmarte Cemetery is a peaceful reminder of the past.  But elsewhere artist’s garrets rent for a fortune and gallery owners want to see a deep resume before considering paintings. Paris has changed in at least one aspect as hometown for the world’s artists; it costs more.

Montparnasse Cemetery with windmill built by Les Frères de la Charité (Brothers of Charity). © L Peat O’Neil

Walking where the famous artists did, seeing their rooms and studios (or whatever has replaced those structures) or visiting their graves, nurtures deeper understanding of their lives and work. Following their footsteps and imagining their daily lives, where they created, drank and talked transposes time and stretches one’s own vision.

Address Book

Artist’s Cafes — Almost any cafe or bar near an art school has “artists-in-residence”. Be aware that not all restaurants, bars or cafes are open on Sunday and in Paris many establishments lock their doors during August.  The places listed below may well offer menus far more expensive than students or emerging artists could afford.

Café de Flore, 172 Blvd. St. Germain. Metro: St. Germain des Près.

La Palette, 43 rue de Seine. Metro: Mabillon.

Le Petit Zinc, 11 rue Saint-Benoit.  Metro: St. Germain des Près

Restaurant Wadja, 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumiere. Metro: Vavin.

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