Gertrude Stein was the woman behind many of the greatest writers and artists in Paris of the 1920’s and her famous catch phrase, the “Lost Generation”. However, there is of course much more to her life and in this week's episode of La Vie Creative - Paris History Avec A Hemingway we explore her entire story.
The youngest of five children born to upper class parents in Pennsylvania. Her father was very wealthy from his wide ranging real estate holdings. At just three years old the entire family picked up and moved to Europe. First landing in Vienna for a few months before they ventured to Paris with nannies and tutors in tow for the five children. The Stein’s wanted to raise there children with an appreciation of art and culture and there wasn’t a better place than Europe to do that. It was the 1880’s, the days when the Impressionists were branching out to shake up the art world and create their own exhibition.
A year later the family returned to America, settling in Oakland where Mr. Stein became the director of the San Francisco Market Street line. He would have been working alongside my Great-Great Grandfather Henry Casebolt who also had the Sutter and Bush lines and designed the cable car break still used today.
At 14 years old, Gertrude would lose her mother and three years later her father. As one of the youngest her older brother Michael looked after her and decided to send her and her sister Bertha to Baltimore to live with family. It was in Baltimore that she would meet the Cone Sisters. Two worldly and progressive women that loved art and hosted a weekly salon in their home, and were the inspiration of her very own in Paris.
Gertrude was incredibly smart and enrolled in Radcliff college to study psychology from 1893-1897. Her professor Williams James said she was one the most brilliant students he had and encouraged her to study medicine at John Hopkins. While she may have excelled she didn’t fit in and found the school to be far too patreolistic for her taste. She became more and more outspoken about the role of women in medicine and John Hopkins wasn’t pleased. In her fourth year she dropped out and decided to travel to London with her brother Leo.
In 1903 Gertrude and Leo found an apartment and studio at 27 Rue de Fleurs perfect for the two of them and Leo who fancied himself an artist as well. Leo already had been collecting art on his trips to Europe and Gertrude also caught the bug. Through their friend Bernard Bereson who was also a collector and friends with many of the artists and art dealers of the time.
Ambroise Vollard, a gallery owner with a personal relationship with Cézanne; Renoir and Picasso but also with an odd way to do business. He would only sell to people he knew and his gallery was always a mess and hard to even walk through. He warmed up to the Stein’s and when their brother Michael gave them 8,000 francs from the family business they knew exactly where to spend it.
They couldn’t afford the well known painters like Delacroix, Ingres and Manet but they could afford some of the other less known artists. With the money they purchased six Cézanne paintings and also a few from Renoir and Gauguin. Whenever they had any money they visited their friend Vollard and bought whatever they could, mostly more Cézanne’s.
In 1905 Leo discovered the young Spanish painter and visited his studio at Le Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre. Picasso was in the midst of his Rose Period and sold Leo a few of his Blue Period paintings as well as the Acrobat Family from the Rose Period. This wonderful painting was on display a few years ago at the Musée d’Orsay’s Picasso Rose et Bleu exhibition. Gertrude wasn’t so sold on the Spanish painter at first but would eventually sit for him for a portrait. A process that took a year as he kept restarting it over and over, but gave the two lots of time to get to know each other. Many said later it didn’t look anything like her to which he would say “it will”, and he was right.
In 1907 Gertrude met Alice B Toklas on her first day in Paris. They had an instant connection and were rarely apart. In 1910 she would move into the Stein’s apartment on Rue de Fleurs and the three would live together as every space on the wall began to be covered with paintings. Leo and Gertrude discovered Matisse and began collecting everything they could and also created a close and lasting friendship. Matisse would stop by and bring friends to visit the apartment and the walls covered with not only his work but also Picasso, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro and Toulouse-Lautrec. It was so often that Gertrude couldn’t have a moment to herself to focus on her writing. It was then that she decided to recreate the salon of the Cohn sisters here in Paris.
Leo couldn’t take it much more and decided to move to Florence and the split of the siblings and their art began. He let her keep the Matisse paintings and all but one of the Cézanne’s that he loved. It was an amicable split but the two would only see each other one time and not even speak. He was bothered by her writing which was beginning to take a controversial route and she seemed to have little regard for anything but herself.
In the 1920’s the expats of America began to arrive and many came knocking on her door. The young Ernest Hemingway armed with a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson would meet Gertrude in Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company on Rue de l’Odeon and the Hemingway’s were quickly a fixture in Stein’s apartment. They became so close that Ernest and Hadley named Gertrude and Alice their son Jack’s godmothers. Many say that Gertrude was the one that molded many of these writers and didn’t want anyone to forget that.
Hemingway pushed her to writer the Autobiography of Alice B Toklas but in the end may have not been his best idea. In the pages Stein lashed out Hemingway saying she is the one that created him but he never wrote anything of worth after the Sun Also Rises. He wasn’t the only one, she also went after Picasso. When the book was released they were not happy and let her know. The book was a success and even got her back to America for a book tour funded by her friend Mabel Dodge. Exerts of the book were released and the feud between Hemingway and Picasso was ignited.
During World War II Gertrude and Alice looked up her art collection in her apartment at 5 rue Christine and left for a house she rented in the Rhone Alps. Gertrude as a Jewish lesbian woman thought she was untuchable to what others in her same situation had to go through. Thinking her money would keep her above any of that and her friendship with Bernard Fay, Vichy collaborator and friend of the Gestapo. He made sure that Stein and Toklas arrived safely. With only her portrait by Picasso and Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne with Fan they were able to stay undisturbed until the end of the war. As for her art collection, it was one of the only one in all of Paris that escaped the hands of the greedy Nazi’s. That wasn’t at all by luck.
While in the Alps she spent time translating Marshal Petain’s speeches into English and found a publisher in America. As soon as her editor saw the opening and her analogy of comparing Petain to George Washington they turned it down. Stein also felt that Hitler should be nominated for a Nobel Prize and even while Petain was on trial and sentenced to death she still supported him. It’s stunning to think a Jewish, lesbian, anti-Semitic woman that was against women’s independence could have these feelings, her entitlement and wealth in the end really did warp her entire vision of reality.
On July 27, 1946 at 72 years old after surgery for stomach cancer she would die. Alice would live on until 1967 and would spend the years in bitter fights over art with Gertrude’s surviving family. The two women were later interred together at Pere Lachaise.
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