19 November 2011

Gertrude Stein in the 6th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #30

The plaque below, at 27 rue Fleurus near the Jardin du Luxembourg, announces that Gertrude Stein lived here from 1903 to 1938, that she had lived with her brother Leo Stein and (her lover) Alice B. Toklas, and that she received many artists and writers there.


'GERTRUDE STEIN

1874—1946
ÉCRIVAIN AMÉRICAN
Vécut ici avec son frère LÉO STEIN
puis avec ALICE B. TOKLAS
elle y reçut de nombreux
artistes et écrivains
de 1903 à 1938'

Léo in fact left in 1914 to Italy, and the famous avant-garde art collection of the brother's and sister's was split in two. The reception of artists and writers alludes to the salons held at rue Fleurus, which were in the beginning attended by such artists as Matisse and Picasso, and later by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and Thornton Wilder.

In Hemingway's early days in Paris when he was without money, Stein once gave him some and he fed and drank beer with great relish at the Brasserie Lipp on the boulevard Saint Germain.

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