Paris Art Studies - The Steins, a chronology
1864 - Marriage of Daniel and
Amelia Stein of German Jewish descent in Baltimore. Daniel is in the wholesale
textile business, one of 5 brothers who emigrated to the USA in the 1840’s.
Daniel is authoritarian but erratic not loved by either of his children. The mother
(Milly) is gentle and vague but with an obstinate, steely temper.
1865 - Birth of Michael Stein.
1870 - Birth of Sarah Anne Samuels in San Fransisco.
1872 - Birth of Leo Stein.
1874 - Birth of Gertrude Stein 3 Feb; in Allegheny Penn. (Pittsburgh). Gertrude will be forever
delighted with problem French officials had of spelling “Allegheny” on official
documents.
1875 - Fallout between Daniel and
brother and partner, Daniel takes family to Vienna.
1877 – Birth
of Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco (1877-1967).
1878 - Amelia settles with
children in Passy in Paris.
1879 – Gertrude returns to
grandparents’ house in Baltimore speaking German and French but no English.
Learns English at 5 and associates it with language in which “emotions began to
feel themselves”.
1880 – Family
move to Oakland, California where Daniel invests in
real estate, stocks and cable cars. Family live in house on 10 acres, with German
governess, servants, a cow and a piano.
1888 - Amelia dies of cancer.
1891 - Death of Daniel. Estate mortgaged successfully by Michael (26). All move to San
Francisco.
1892 – Gertrude
moves back to mother’s
family in Baltimore with Bertha.
Leo studies at Harvard.
1893 – Gertrude
studies at Radcliffe
women’s college near Harvard, philosophy, English and psychology with William
James (brother of Henry). Starts writing.
1894 - Michael marries Sarah Samuels (1870-1953) daughter of a wealthy German Jewish merchant from San
Fransisco.
1895 – Birth of the couple’s only child Allan Daniel Stein in San Francisco. Leo admitted into law school
at Harvard, gives up after a few months. Leaves USA for world tour with his
cousin Fred Stein.
1896 –
Gertrude travels to Europe, meets Leo in Antwerp.
1897 – Gertrude
flunks Latin, cannot
graduate. Studies psychology at John Hopkins in Baltimore. Leo studies
biology also at John Hopkins. Both hold Jewish intellectual salon while at
university.
1898 – Gertrude receives BA in
medicine.
1900 – Gertrude spends summer in
Italy with Leo and Mabel Weeks. Leo visits Bernard Berenson in Florence. Gertrude bored with medicine. First love
affair with May Bookstaver – unhappy triangle with third student in
Baltimore.
1902 – Getrude
abandons love affair and
university, depressed, and joins Leo in London. Starts notebooks which will
become “the Making of Americans”.
1903 - Gertrude settles in Paris
in fall with Leo at 27 rue de Fleurus (she is 29) in pavilion in
courtyard with only “Yale” lock in Paris.
Leo hangs Japanese prints and first modern pictures by William Steer, he
buys his first Cézanne at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery. Cook Hélène,
a Norman, runs household on 8 francs a day. Michael and Sarah move to Paris
too with son Allan, settle at 58 rue
Madame where Sarah like Gertrude will also hold Saturday “salons”.
1904 - Gertrude and Leo receive $
8000 dividend from family estate, begin buying pictures at Vollard’s: 2
Cézannnes, 2 Gauguins, 2 Renoirs and a Maurice Denis. Their greatest purchase
that year will be “Madame Cézanne with fan”.
1905 - Leo buys Matisse’s “Woman with a Hat” from Fauve show at Salon d’Automne. Beginning
of Saturday salon at rue de Fleurus. « De la part de qui venez
vous? Mais de la votre Madame. » Their apartment is considered the first
museum of modern art. Leo and Getrude also buy their first Picassos, “The
Family of Acrobats with Monkey ” and “Girl with Basket of Flowers” from Clovis
Sagot. They meet Picasso in
November.
1906 - Dinners with professorial
Matisse (“cher maître”) and Amélie Matisse, Manguin, the sullen André Derain – much
disliked by Gertrude. Tall, pipe smoking, Braque. Matisse will eventually bring
the Russian textile magnate and collector Sergei Shuckin. Other guests are
Fernande Olivier (Picasso’s girlfriend), the poet and art critic Guillaume
Apollinaire with his girlfriend Marie Laurencin and the mystic poet Max Jacob.
Gertrude will do 80-90
sittings for her portrait by Picasso,
who will also portray Leo and Allan.
San Francisco earthquake. The Michael Steins return briefly to
California to survey the damage. Etta and Claribel Cone frequent
visitors from Baltimore, begin collecting Matisse.
1907 - Leo gives up on Picasso
after seeing Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Matisse now too expensive for Leo. Picasso is patronized by Gertrude
exclusively. Alice Toklas
arrives in Paris with friend Harriet Levy. Meets Stein at Michael’s– instant coup de foudre – she is invited to walk
in Luxembourg next day. Is half an hour late, Gertrude is furious.
Matisse opens his academy in
old convent rue de Sèvres and in 1908 at hotel Biron with financial help from
the Michael Steins. Sarah is his staunchest defender and will study under him
along with Hans Purrmann and Max Weber. Sarah was unfailingly didactic, bossy and insistent
that others follow her lead.
1908 -. Secret “marriage” of
Gertrude and Alice on holiday in Italy in the summer. Gertrude (“lovey”) is
34 and Alice (“pussy”) 31. Back in Paris, Alice begins typing Getrude’s manuscripts. First Cubist word portraits (in 1909
Picasso and Matisse) – “Ada” in the texts is Alice. Sarah embraces Christian Science.
1909 - Gertrude publishes “Three
Lives” with Grafton at her own expense.
1910 - Alice moves into rue de Fleurus. Leo has affair with model Nina Auzias, he
marries her in 1921.
1911 - Flood of American painters
in Paris, all visit Gertrude: Alfred Maurer, Max Weber, Patrick Henry Bruce,
Morgan Russell, Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella.
1913 - Final separation with
Leo who moves to Italy. He keeps the Renoirs and apples by Cézanne and
Gertrude the Picassos. They never
meet again. Rue de Fleurus wired for electricity. Gertrude meets Carl van
Vechten, NY Times music critic, later agent and literary executor.
1914 - Gertrude buys her first Juan Gris. 15 Matisses belonging to the
Michael Steins on loan to a German gallery are confiscated after declaration of
war.
1915 - Prolonged stay of Gertrude
and Alice in Mallorca. Development of inner, private monologues with code
words, “cow” = orgasm. Leo returns to the USA and stays in Taos in New Mexico
where he will study the Pueblo Indians.
1916 – Getrude
and Alice return to France.
1917 - Gertrude buys her first
car, a Ford, named “auntie”, drives wounded American doughboys for American
fund.
1919 - Definitive return of
Gertrude and Alice to Paris. Gertrude puts on weight. Loves beef and laughs
“like a beefsteak” according to Mabel Dodge (divorcée, girlfriend of communist
John Reed, co-organizer of Armory show, critic and Greenwich Village
personality of 20s). Alice is “dainty” and oriental, wears batiks, Getrude
corduroy. Always manicuring her nails. Leo returns to Europe, settles in
Settignano in Italy.
1920 - First American subscriber
to Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company (Sylvia girlfriend is Adrienne
Mosnier). Cubists now dispersed are replaced at rue de Fleurus by young
Americans. “All the young men for 2 or 3 years were 26.” Saturday salons
suspended for financial reasons. Gertrude and Alice start visiting other salons
notably Nathalie Barney’s.
New Ford: “Godiva”.
1921 - Sylvia Beach introduces
Gertrude to Sherwood Anderson.
1922 - Gertrude Meets Man Ray and
through Anderson, Ernest Hemingway. She meets the future Surrealist painter André Masson. Estranged
from Beach after publication of Ulysses (she is jealous of Joyce). Self
publishes “Sacred Emily” – a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose …
1923 - Gertrude and Alice are
godmothers to Bumby son of Hadley and Ernest Hemingway. They meet Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson publishers of
Little Review. Spend their first summer in Belley in the Rhône
valley. Allan Stein marries an opera dancer Yvonne Rochefort Daunt.
1924 - Publication of Making of
Americans in Ford Madox Ford’s Transatlantic Review.
1925 – Gertrude
meets J Scott Fitzgerald
through Hemingway.
1926 – Gertrude
assumes her characteristic short haircut. First fall out with Hemingway.
Alice despite apparent frailty protects and supports Gertrude. She is
the mainstay of relationship. Alice always takes up with writers’ and artists’
wives. Gertrude drives like a devil. The Michael Steins commission a suburban
villa, Les Terraces in Garches, from the great modernist architect, Le Corbusier. They will live in it with
Sarah’s close Christian Science friend Gabrielle de Monzie. The Michael Steins love
art, but they also have a fondness for the latest theories on health and
fitness, and took up stringent new diets and exercise regiments with
enthusiasm.
1927 - Nathalie Barney (whose girlfriend is Romaine Brooks) organizes public readings of Making of Americans at her literary
salon on rue Jacob, the“académie des femmes”. New painters in Gertrude’s circle
are the neo-romantics Pavlik Tcheelitchev, Eugene and Leonid Berman (stage
designers) and Christian Bérard. Birth of Allan’s son Daniel.
1928 - New car and poodle:
“Basket”.
1929 – Gertrude
and Alice rent their “house of dreams”
Billignin in the Rhône valley for
summer.
1930 – Gertrude’s
first and last meeting with
Joyce. Allan Stein and Yvonne divorce. He remarries Roubina Alexanian.
1932 – Gertrude
writes Autobiography of
Alice B Toklas in 6 weeks. New artist friends is former Dadaist Francis Picabia.
1933 – Publication of
“Autobiography”, it is an immediate best seller. All her friends and artists
are consternated by what they consider to be a pack of lies and distortions.
1934-35 – Gertrude undertakes lecture tour in USA. At Algonquin in NY she is mobbed by the press – does
radio broadcast. Lectures to
bewildered public at MoMA and Mid West universities. Invited to White house by
Eleanor Rooselvelt. Flies to LA, declines movie offer and visits San Francisco.
1935 - Michael Steins sell their
villa and return to USA, they settle in Palo Alto.
1938 - Lease runs out at rue de
Fleurus. Gertrude and Alice move to 5 rue Christine. Visits from Cecil Beaton – death of Basket replaced by
Basket II. Death of Michael Stein of
cancer at 73.
1939 - At outbreak of war Alice
and Gertrude close up rue Christine and move permanently to Billignin. Take
Picasso portrait and Mme Cézanne. Decide to remain France despite American
Consulate warning.
1940- Allan
Stein with his wife Roubina and little boy Michael leave France for California.
Leo remains in Italy with Nina.
1941-42 – Gertrude and
Alice are at first sympathetic to Pétain regime. Gertrude tries to translate
“paroles aux français” into English. Protected through war by Vichy official Bernard
Fay.
1943 – They
move to Le Colombier after
Billignin lease ends. No vegetable garden in new house, long treks in search of
food in the country. Pierre Balmain sends clothes. Stein sympathizes with
surrounding maquisards.
1944 - Liberated by first American
troops coming up from south. Return to Paris – reunion with Hemingway and
Picasso. Allan Steins return to Europe where Allan continues his profession of
race horse trainer.
1945 - Rue Christine invaded by
enthusiastic GIs. Invited by Life
magazine Gertrude tours American bases in Germany.
1946 - Intestinal attacks. Getrude
diagnosed with colon cancer. Dies at American Hospital in Neuilly.
Buried in Père Lachaise. She leaves her portrait by Picasso to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. The rest of the art collection is left to her nephew
Allan with Alice reserving the right to keep it during her lifetime and sell
(with heirs’ permission) what is necessary for her subsistence.
1947 – Death
of Leo Stein at 75 following an operation. Daniel Stein, Allan’s son, buys
his first race horse. Sarah will sell much of her collection to pay his bills
and debts in the future.
1951 – Death
of Allan Stein (at 55) who leaves his collection to his wife Roubina and
their children.
1953 – Death
of Sarah Stein at 83 in San Francisco.
1957 – Alice
converts to Catholicism.
1960 – During
her absence in a Catholic retreat in Italy, Allan’s heirs sequester collection, accusing
Alice of having sold works without their knowledge and not insuring collection
properly. The works are placed in a vault in Chase Manhattan Bank in Paris.
1964 – Alice
is expelled from the rue Christine apartment. Moves to modern building on rue
de la Convention in the 15th arrdt.
1967 - Alice dies at 89 in Paris. In will
insists on Catholic burial.
1968 – A
consortium of administrators and patrons of the museum of Modern Art in New
York raise funds to buy what is left of the Getrude Stein collection for the
museum.