Red men...

I found a red man among the trees close to the Paris Observatory (see previous post).  Actually, he stands on a pedestal, on which you, until 1942 and the Nazi occupation, could find the statue of François Arago (1786-1853), a man with a lot of activities, but his statue was obviously placed here, close to the Observatory, due to his being – also - an astronomer, known for his works on the (French) meridian. I talked about it and on him several times, e.g. here.

I found out that the red man, sniffing some kind of a flower, was placed here, very unofficially, by an artist called James Colomina… and then I learnt that he had placed another (little) red man on the Pont Mirabeau.  

I have already posted about this beautiful bridge, built during the last years of the 19^th century (here and here), but I felt that the bridge was worth some more photos. Those days, the decorations were important - there is even a man with a (tagged) flame… reminding us that we can see another flame close to the neighbouring bridge (see posts e.g. here and here).  

On my way to the second little red man, I felt that I had to take some photos of the Seine banks under a particularly blue sky.  

Lavirotte - addendum

Referring to my recent post about buildings by Jules Lavirotte in Paris, I have now received the – surprisingly enough - possibly only, recent, book about him and his works, which I ordered last week. There you can read something more about his life, what he constructed elsewhere... and about his violent car accident which seriously limited his activities during his last 9 or 10 years.

Reading the book made me wish to make an addendum to my previous post. I learnt that the quite simple “moderate rent” building on 169, Boulevard Lefebvre, was supposed to have three of four more floors - see above. The book does not give any clear reason why finally the building only got the first two floors on top of the commercial ground floor, which during many years was occupied by the painting company Mallez, which regularly worked for Lavirotte.  This (half-) building has been threatened by demolition, but is now obviously saved.  

Lavirotte died at the age of 64. The book has a lot of illustrations also from the interior of some of the famous Paris art nouveau buildings.

More about Jules Lavirotte buildings - but who was he?

Some ten years ago, I wrote about some Art Nouveau buildings by the architect Jules Lavirotte (1864-1929), the most famous ones perhaps to be found on Avenue and Square Rapp (see here), but I also wrote about the Céramic Hotel (see here) and on a building on Avenue Messine (see here). There are a few more to be seen in Paris, so I thought it was time to make a more complete “report”.

Lavirotte's first contract in 1898 – he was 34, was obviously for 151, Rue de Grenelle. The style is not yet really so striking. I feel that it’s more particularly the front door which gives you an Art Nouveau feeling.

In 1899 he was the architect of Hôtel Montessuy, 12 Rue Sédillot. This was built as a private mansion for the Countess Montessuy and we can see that here Lavirotte has been much more creative.  The building is today to a large extent transformed in its interior – it has become an Italian school.

1900-1901 he built at 29 Avenue Rapp and…

… at Square Rapp the buildings for which he is the most famous and which definitely are Art Nouveau. The spectacular part is of course to a large extent due to the ceramics and Lavirotte’s collaboration with Alexandre Bigot (1862-1927), a ceramicist who also worked a lot with other Art Nouveau architects, like Hector Guimard (see posts here). Lavirotte made Square Rapp, which was finished first, into his private address.

A “softer” Art Nouveau version is to be found at 134 Rue de Grenelle, finished in 1903. Some prominent people have lived in this building, including Edgar Faure.

The Art Nouveau is again in full bloom, to a large part thanks to the ceramics by Alexandre Bigot, at this hotel building from 1904, which actually has the name Céramic Hôtel.  

A surprisingly modest building - a “moderate rent” one -, from 1906, is to be found at 169 Boulevard Lefebvre. Exceptionally, you cannot read Lavirotte’s name on the facade.

This building from 1907, 23 Avenue Messine, is again very fashionable, but again less extravagant, although extremely decorated thanks to the sculptor Léon Binet, with whom Lavirotte worked regularly. The original building, which we can see on an old photo, received some additional floors during the 1930’s.

Immediately neighbouring this building, also from 1907, you can find this one, 6 Rue Messine.  

Lavirotte lived another 20 years…  Who was he? What did he look like? Almost impossible to find anything about his later activities, his personal life… but I found that there is now, at last and since last year, a book about him – which I will buy. It seems that he got married in 1897 to Jeanne, a bit older than he… , that he had a car accident around 1920 which stopped his career.. … Once I have the book, maybe I can tell you a bit more. 

Changed plans...

My intention was to visit “Le Hameau d’Alleray”, the little kind of alley where some of us would like to live. However, the gate was closed and I found nobody to open it, so here is just a photo taken through the gate.

Well, I had to find something for my blog, so I took a little walk. Here is a picture of the war memorial of the 15^th arrondissement. It dates from 1934, but later received some additional text referring to WWII and also to the Indochina War. You find a mixture of personalities on the left, noblemen, revolutionaries…, supposed to be anonymous. However it seems quite obvious that one of the revolutionaries must be Danton?   

       

I continued my walk to the nearby Square Saint Lambert. This park replaced an important gas factory (1894 map, 1900 illustration - below) and was created during the 1930’s. The park is quite large … and a nice spring day quite occupied – it was lunch-break hours. 

Villa Gabriel

Walking around Montparnasse, especially thinking about the artist life during the first part of the 20^th century, - see e.g. my recent posts about the Bourdelle Museum and about Cité Falguière - I also managed to visit what is named Villa Gabriel. We are in a part of Paris where so much was changed during the 1960’s and 70’s, of course including the Montparnasse Tower… , but a few streets and alleys, some workshops and studios... are still around to remind us about the artistically rich Montparnasse years.

On the map comparisons below (1894 and today), we can see how the Villa Gabriel and the Bourdelle Museum are interconnected and there is even an imagined prolongation with the other small alley on which I posted already in 2008, the “Chemin de Montparnasse”, where Marie Vasieleff offered meals and drinks to starving and thirsty artists like Chagall, Picasso, Leger, Modigliani, Soutine, Zadkine, Matisse…  

When, around 1905, the Franciscans who had occupied Villa Gabriel had to leave, the different workshops and studios that had been created became occupied by different craftsmen and artists and also by a school specialising in the teaching of electricity, the Ecole Breguet - which since has left.

Very difficult to find some more detailed information about who may have been the artists who have lived here – there are still some around, but we will perhaps learn more about them in some decades… . I found information only about Alfred Maurer (1868-1932). Starting in a more conventional way, like with the prize-winning “An arrangement” we can see here, he developed during his later Paris-years by painting in a cubist and fauvist manner. Despite support from Leo and Gertrude Stein, something went wrong, he went back to his native US, was almost forgotten and committed suicide. Some of his paintings are now worth several hundred thousand dollars and can be found in the leading museums.   

Cité Falguière

The photo above shows the studio where Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) lived and worked during some of the WWI years. He was advised by his friends Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) that this studio was available. We are at Cité Falguière where Soutine and Modigliani already lived. Here we can see Foujita and also Modigliani, sitting in Foujita’s studio… and Foujita’s drawings of Jeanne Hébuterne (1898-1920) – she modelled for him even before meeting Modigliani. (I’m not here telling the tragic end of the story between Modigliani and Hébuterne …. see e.g. my post here.)  

I will talk more about Soutine, Modigliani and others… but first a look on where we are.  We are in a little alley, which got its present name, Cité Falguière, after the death of the sculptor Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900). Here we can see Falguière in a self-portrait and as sculpted by his good friend Rodin. The statue of Balzac is by Falguière.

Around 1870 a collaborator and sculptor friend of Falguière, Jules-Ernest Bouillot, took the initiative to build a number of simple, cheap, studios for artists in this alley.  This is also where he lived, more comfortably, himself. In 1877 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) moved in, no to one of the new studios, but in a building on the corner of the street. Gauguin was then a young man, working as a stockbroker, married and father of five kids… JE Bouillot and some other artists living in the alley encouraged Gauguin to sculpt and the only two busts known by Gauguin were made here, representing his wife and one of the kids. He also made his self-portrait and painted another of his kids. Only a few years later Gauguin decided to be a full-time artist.

Let’s have a look on the little alley. A large part of the studios disappeared in the 1960’s during those days' sometimes violent housing projects, but a few are still there, nos. 9 and 11. I tried with colours to show what has changed…  Soutine has painted the disappeared no. 13. 

… and he also painted the no. 11, where he worked himself. Walking along the alley, I was lucky to by pure chance run into the artist who now occupies the studio, Mira Maodus, and she very kindly opened the door!!  

Here we can see Chaïm Soutine – a self-portrait, but also as portrayed by his friend Modigliani. … and what their often common meals may have looked like. We are still in the WWI years.  

These were the years when Modigliani concentrated on sculpting, but not only… It’s a bit unclear exactly in which studio Modigliani lived, but it seems that he quite often shared with Soutine. They were very good friends, although very different… Modigliani was always careful about his looks and behaviour, Soutine not at all.  

Another occupant of one of the studios those days was Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1957). He was also portrayed by Modigliani.

Thanks to Mira Maodus I managed to get into what you can’t see from the street side. This included then of course the Foujita studio we can see on the top picture.  Looking over the roof tops, we can see the immediate neighbouring buildings of the Pasteur Institute (see previous post).

I thought I also just had to mention here “Kiki de Montparnasse” (Alice Prin, 1901-53), who already “appeared” in a number of my posts, e.g. here. She was an early friend of Soutine, came here quite young… and later of course became “La Reine de Montparnasse”. Here we see her as (later) painted by Foujita and of course as the famous “Violon d’Ingres” by Man Ray.  

I think I have to mention a few other artists from the same period – Joseph Csaky (1888-1971), Maurice Blond (1899-1974) and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918) – photographed at Cité Falguière during a party with friends.

It seems also that among frequent later guests to artist friends here were Georges Brassens (1921-81) - on whom I have also posted several times (e.g here, here and here) and also that it was during a visit here that Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) invented his famous “Bip” character.

     

Bourdelle Museum

There is an amazing museum to be found in the 15^th arrondissement, Musée Bourdelle. Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) was an artist, especially known as a sculptor. He learnt sculpting from masters like Falguière and Dalou, joined Rodin and became his friend. He later worked as a teacher himself and had some famous pupils like Giacometti, Maillol, Matisse and - for my Swedish friends - Bror Hjort.

Bourdelle had his home and workshop here for the 45 last years of his life, however occupying much less space than the present museum, which was first opened in 1949 and has since been considerably expanded, possibly now occupying ten times more space than Bourdelle’s original home and studio. The museum is one of the City of Paris’ Museums, meaning that you don’t have to pay an entrance fee (but small “donations” are appreciated.) There are more than 500 works to be seen, inside and outside…

Here we can see what Antoine Bourdelle looked like. I also added here some photos from posts where I have showed some of his works visible in Paris on which I have posted - the monument in honour of Mickiewicz (here), “La France” in front of the Palais de Tokyo (here), the decoration of Auguste Perret’s Théâtre des Champs Elysées (here)…

The museum can be found in a little street, which now bears his name, close to the Montparnasse Tower.