Live from Paris January 30, 2022
Saint George and the Artists
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Musée de la Vie Romantique, 16 rue Chaptal
Built in 1820 when much of this entire area was developed for a wealthy entrepreneur, Wormser. In 1830 Dutch artist Ary Scheffer moved into the house and had two glass topped pavilions created. For almost 30 years he lived and worked ther and trained many of the up and coming artists of the time including Marie de l’Orleans, daughter of Louis-Philippe.
Scheffer was a master of the Romantic movement and every Friday his atelier would turn into the Salon of the artists, writers and composers of the period that lived in the streets surrounding. Delacroix, Chopin, George Sand, Balzac and Victor Hugo all talked over the matters of the day under the wisteria covered courtyard.
Ary Scheffer died in 1858 and his daughter Cornelia and her husband purchased the property and kept it in the family. In 1956 his niece sold it to the State and in 1982 the City of Paris took it over. It originally served as an annex to the Musée Carnavalet and in 1987 it opened its doors as the Musée de la Vie Romantique. Fans of George Sand can find a few rooms dedicated to her and holding many of her items.
Opened Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm. Permanent collection is free, but special exhibits have a small ticket price.
Let’s head out onto the street. Just across the entrance at no 17 Rue Chaptal lived Nina de Villard de Callias who held popular Salons attended by the artists and authors. In 1874, Manet captured her in Lady with Fans that is now in the Musée d’Orsay.
At no 11 Rue Chaptal Serge Gainsbourg lived as a child and attended the school across the street.
Look up to the top of no 10 which was once the SACEM, the Society of Artists, Composers, Editors and Musicians, At the top a bas-relief of their coat of arms is surrounded by angels with a harp and violin, but look closer just below at the sculpture of Beethoven wearing a crown of laurels.
No 9 Adolphe Goupel who was a 19th century art collector, merchant and publisher had this beautiful building built in 1857 and lived and held his office. Later Romanian composer and architect Iaannis Xenakis lived until his death in 2001.
Right onto Rue Notre-Dame-de-Laurette the street named after the beautiful church at the base of the hill. At no 58 from 1844-1857 Eugene Delacroix lived before moving to the Place de Furstenberg in Saint Germain.
No 56 Paul Gauguin was born here in 1848
No 54 Heloise and Abelard and memorialized in the busts at the top of the bas reliefs
No 49 Pissaro lived and the small balcony is held up by sculpted pelicans.
Further down the street is the Square Alex Biscarre that takes part of the garden of the Dosne-Thiers house located at no 27 Place Saint George. In 1832 Alexis Dosne had a neoclassical home built for his family. His wife Euridyce Dosne was having an affair with businessman and politician Adolphe Thiers. To keep him close she advised him to marry her daughter Elisa in 1840. When her father died in 1849, the two inherited the house.
In 1871 during the Commune the home was looted and destroyed, Thiers went on to become the President of the Republic for 20 months after Napoleon III was ousted. The building was rebuilt in 1873 based on the original plans. In 1877 when he died his funeral was held down the street at the Eglise Notre Dame de Lorette. His casket traveled from Lorette to Pere Lachaise where 20,000 people followed and another million lined the streets.
After the death of his wife a large amount of his objets d’art collection was donated to the Louvre which you can see just before going into the apartments of Napoleon III. Their home was given to the Institut de France and now holds an amazing research library opened to serious researchers and was also where Dan Brown did a lot of research for the Da Vinci Code.
In the center of Place St George is the Monument to Gavarin by Denys Puech who was an lithographer, artist and cartoonist. He lived nearby from 1837-1846 and this monument replaces the former water trough serving the tired horses going up and down the hill. Denys also did the stunning l’Aurore in the Orsay that is almost translucent in the right light. (she is located on the upper northern terrace.
No 28 us the real show stopper of the Place Saint George. Built in 1840 it was given to the Marquise de Paiva, a Russian courtesan by her first husband Albino Francisco de Arauho de Paiva. The marriage barely lasted past the altar when she said it was over and she had no use for him. The facade is gorgeous in its Gothic Revival and Neo-Renaissance style and topped with allegorical statues of abundance and temperance. However Paiva had bigger plans in mind. In 1852, a year later her next wealthy gentleman caller built her a new very lavish hotel particulier on the Champs Elysées.
At the other corner is the Theatre Saint George, opened in 1829. Heading down the street we take a left on Rue Laferriere a once rogue street that the neighbors created and the city chose to ignore for a few decades. It's the perfectly quiet little street that backs the large houses on the Place Saint George. Poet Stephane Mallarmé was born on this street on March 18, 1842. He would play a large role in the life of Julie Manet, daughter of Berthe Morisot after she lost her mother serving as a guardian.
Rue Henri Monnier, named after the cartoonist, actor and playwright. Impressionist Eva Gonzalez lived with her parents at no 15 and then at no 2 over the pharmacy with husband Henri Guérard. A quick right onto the Rue Clauzel and the Place Gustave Toudouze, journalist that lived just above. On the corner over the Cafe Pere Tanguy at no 24 lived Henri-Francois Riesner and his wife Anne-Louis who was the cousin of Eugene Delacroix. Henri and his son Louis Antoine Léon Riesner were both artists and Delacroix even captured the hunky Louis in a beautiful portrait in the Louvre.
Guy de Maupassant lived at no 17, clearly out of the view of the Eiffel tower he despised so much.
No 14 is one of my favorites Pere Tanguy. A man that had ties to some of the greatest artists of the 19th century. Julien Francois Tanguy was born on June 28, 1825 in Brittany where he would spend the beginning of his life, working as a pork butcher until he married and moved to Paris. The friend to the artists first worked for the Western Railway until 1865 when he began working as a color crusher that led him to become a merchant.
Père Tanguy as he was known to the artists opened his shop at 14 Rue Clauzel in the Saint Georges New Athens neighborhood. The streets where Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh roamed and found their way through his door. Tanguy was well known as a happy fellow who loved to help the artists. When some of them couldn’t afford paint, he let them pay with paintings. Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Doctor Paul Gachet were his many customers that also gifted him paintings. Post-Impressionist artist Emile Bernard said a visit to his store was like walking into a museum.
There was one artist that was especially touched by Tanguy, Vincent Van Gogh. Theo and Vincent Van Gogh met Tanguy in March 1886 when they lived one street over and instantly had a bond. His tiny shop would be the first one to have a Van Gogh painting for sale. In letters between the brothers while Vincent was in the south he was constantly asking how Tanguy was doing. Some artists said his paint wasn’t the best, but he was such a wonderful man that would even give food to a starving artist they always bought from him. Upon his death in 1894, the artists banded together and held an auction of their paintings to help support his family.
As for Vincent, he painted three portraits of his friend. The first is rather dull in color, but the third is one of my favorites. With Tanguy sitting in the center, his hands crossed with a hat on, he is surrounded by Van Gogh’s beloved collection of Japanese prints. It stayed in Tanguy’s personal collection until his death, when his daughter sold it to Rodin. Rodin and Van Gogh shared a love for Japanese prints as well as knowing the paint merchant. Today it can be seen in the Musée Rodin.
No 9, Pere Tanguy moved his shop to this larger location for the final two years of his life from 1892-1894.
No 8, historical painter Eugene Laurent Jules Lagier lived.
No 2, Prosper Marilhat, orientalist painter died at just 36.
Left for a short walk down rue des Martyrs, no 49 artist Théodore Géricault had his studio and died here in 1824 at just 32 years old after a horse accident and long illness. Scheffer had captured the moment he laid on his deathbed and also now hangs in the Louvre. Géricault lived just down the street at no 23.
Left onto Rue Victor Masse named for the composer. No 9 Paul Delaroche lived in this gorgeous building recently restored.
No 12, was the 2nd location of Le Chat Noir and was also the atelier of Alfred Stevens on the first floor.
No 13, Degas lived, one of his many within a few blocks and at no 19 Mary Cassatt lived in the 1870’s.
At no 25, was once the gallery of Berthe Weill, the first woman to own a gallery in Paris in 1901. She had a keen eye for new artists including Picasso and was his first supporter when he arrived in Paris. She also supported the women artists like Susanne Valadon and Jacqueline Marval. Weill held the first and only exhibition of Modigliani and as she staged his paintings the full length nude in the window with pubic hair shocked the neighbors and the police shut it down. Giving in after she was arrested she agreed to move the painting from view and could reopen. The bad publicity was great for traffic but not a single painting was sold and shortly after Modigliani died. She was an amazing woman, check out the episode we did about her life on Paris History Avec a Hemingway on La Vie Creative podcast.
And if no 25 wasn’t historic enough Theo van Gogh was living there in 1886 when his brother Vincent crashed the party in Paris and moved in. They stayed in the very tiny room for just two months from February to April 1886 before moving to Rue Lepic.
Back to Rue Henri Monnier at the very end at no 34 Théodore Chassériau had his atelier, he also moved around a lot in this area.
Rue Frochot leads to Place Pigalle and where Degas lived at no 4 in 1870 and also had his atelier on the first floor. His neighbor at no 6, Desire Dihau was a bassoonist in the orchestra and friends with Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec and he sat for each of them a few times.
Across the street at no 5, Toulouse-Lautrec had his second to last atelier and another at no 15 (which the number no longer exists)
Up in Place Pigalle at no 3 was the former Le Rat Mort, the dead rat. And it got that name, you guessed it, the hard way. The day it opened a dead rat was discovered floating in the beer pump that had been there for days leading to a horrid smell. A patron walked in and said “it smells like a dead rat”, thus the name
At no 7 once lived the beautiful Apollonie Sabatier who was a model for Auguste Clésinger for his Woman Stung by a Serpent statue that shocked the Salon as they thought it was woman in the throws of passion. She had been the bell of the artists and author set and first met Baudelaire at the Hotel Lauzon where they both had a room. She inspired him to write a few poems in the Flowers of Evil. Many other artists painted or captured her essence in marble and clay but she just might be all over Paris as well.
In 1860 she was the lover of Richard Wallace, the wealthy Englishman that decided to use his wealth to combat the public drunkenness of Paris. Inspired by the monument for the heart of Henri II in the Louvre he worked with sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg to create the beloved fountains that still quench the thirst of Parisians. Take a closer look at the face of the statue compared to a few images of Apollonie. I haven’t found any info saying it is her but you be the judge of it. I think there is an uncanny resemblance.
And lastly at no 9 there once stood the Cafe de la Nouvelle Athène where all the artists and writers hung out. Degas found his way here many days and had an idea for a painting of a coupe and a glass of absinthe. Unable to find anyone fitting his vision he had two friends sit for him. She looks destitute and stares off into the distance. It is both beautiful and heartbreaking and hangs in the Musée d’Orsay. The cafe was open from 1855 to 1903 and in 1920 became the Sphynx and was the spot for many of the American expats, the Lost Generation. The building was destroyed in a fire in 2004 and sadly none of it remains.