Cecil Beaton, Alice B. Toklas; Gertrude Stein, 1936. ©Cecil Beaton studio archive at Sotheby's
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears” Gertrude Stein once said, highlighting her irreverent approach to both art and literature. Avid art collectors, Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah were important patrons of modern art in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century. The Stein’s family collection was exhibited in Paris’ Grand Palais earlier this year, and is now opening at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
“L’aventure des Stein” retraces Gertrude’s entire family’s move to France at the turn of the last century, and each family member’s passionate acquiring of modern art. The exhibition focuses in particular on the bold, matron-like character of Gertrude Stein, the role she has played in the art scene of the time, and the sometimes-intimate relationships she has had with some of the painters.
Interestingly, when she’d first moved to Paris, Gertrude Stein was unfamiliar with the art world, and it was her brother Leo who introduced her to the avant-garde scene of the time. Before long, their Montparnasse flat became the heart of a thriving art and literature scene. The Steins’ Saturday evening salons introduced a generation of visitors to recent developments in art, particularly the work of their close friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, long before it was on view in museums.
But one the most notable elements of her life in Paris – and of the show – is her friendship with Picasso, who she began collecting at an early stage. Alongside notebooks and the now world-famous ‘Nu à la Serviette’, the exhibition also presents more personal pieces, like the self-portrait of a young Pablo, or the portrait he had made of Gertrude Stein. The latter had turned out to be a difficult experience, as both later recalled in their diaries. Picasso had found it hard to capture the true spirit of the writer, hidden behind a stern ‘mask’. While their circle thought it look nothing like Gertrude, Picasso replied, “She’ll end up looking like that.”
Stein returned the homage a few years later, when she began passionately writing about art and produced a famous portrait in the publication ‘Camera Work’, inspired by some of the pieces she owned; the text was described a ‘cubist text’, creating a parallel between her deconstruction of grammar and the movement’s pictorial melt-down of conventional shapes.
When Gertrude Stein’s lifelong partner Alice B. Toklas first came into her life, her brother disapproved so strongly that he moved back to the United States, and the collection was split between them. Gertrude kept the Picassos, while Leo held on to the Renoirs.
The Steins Collect
Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
February 28–June 3, 2012
Print