Gertrude Stein Queen of the Salon

In the decades bracketing World War I, Paris was the centre of the literary/artistic world, and the epicentre of that world was a two-storey apartment on the city’s Left Bank near the Luxembourg Gardens. There, at 27 rue de Fleurus, American expatriate Gertrude Stein reigned supreme, assisted by her longtime companion Alice Toklas. The two physically mismatched women made a formidable team. Loquacious, heavyset Stein held forth from her favoured chair beside the fireplace, while watchful, diminutive Toklas controlled access to Stein and made conversation at the opposite end of the room with the wives and girlfriends of the various artists and writers who flocked to the couple’s Saturday night salons. For more than two decades, chez Stein was the place to be.

Part of the attraction, besides the good food and lively conversation, was the remarkable collection of Modernist paintings that Gertrude and her brother Leo had acquired during a decade of living together in Paris. Leo had arrived first, in 1902, intent on becoming a painter himself. Gertrude followed a year later after dropping out of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore in the wake of an unrequited love affair with a beautiful young woman. On the short, winding rue de Fleurus the siblings shared a four-room apartment, two rooms above, two below, with a detached courtyard studio for Leo. They began scouring Paris for painters to champion.

With the help of