“Gertrude was prodigal of introductions. She sensed that I needed something Florence could not give. The few modern painters who lived in Florence need not have lived there at all, for they turned towards France and Cezanne for inspiration…”
– Harold Acton, Memoirs of An Aesthete (1948), p. 184
On a quiet street in Paris, called rue de Fleurus, there is a small marble plaque on the facade of building number 27 dedicated to the queen of American exiles in Paris. It reads: “Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946, AMERICAN WRITER. Lived here with her brother Leo Stein, then with Alice B. Toklas, she received many artists and writers from 1903 to 1938.” In this apartment, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo welcomed some of the most interesting writers and artists of the early 20th century. Paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Renoir climbed up the walls toward the ceiling of the apartment. By the 1920s, literary and artistic luminaries like Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, the Sitwell siblings and James Joyce were regularly in attendance at Stein’s evening salon. Stein described the young men and women who sought meaning after World War I, the “lost generation.” There were so many cubist, modernist, and post-impressionist works that the New York Times in an article dated December 1, 1968 by J.R. Mellow dubbed her two-story apartment, “the first museum of modern art.”
In the exhibition, one finds an evocation of Gertrude Stein’s Parisian literary and artistic salon, in front of the fireplace and below the Father and Son Portrait of Arthur and Harold Acton by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1913). This painting serves as a way to connect the Acton family with Mable Dodge (1879-1962), who was the mutual acquaintance of both Gertrude Stein and Harold’s parents. In fact, they all had met each other in Florence at the Villa Curonia in Arcetri (Memoirs, pp. 46-47). In 1926 while attending Oxford, Harold invited Gertrude Stein to give a lecture to the Ordinary Society. As he recalls in his Memoirs: In all my experience of Oxford literary societies, […] I noticed that none excelled Edith Sitwell and Gertrude Stein in stimulating discussion (p. 132).
In addition to writers frequenting Gertrude and Leo Stein’s Parisian flat, there were many contemporary artists as well. Picasso would paint one of Gertrude Stein’s most memorable portraits and the Spanish artist Pedro Pruna (1904-1977), who owed his style to the the “classical phase of Picasso” (Memoirs, p. 151) would draw a portrait of Harold as a young man while attending Oxford. For the Salon three works on paper in pen, ink, and body color are displayed. Two of these are signed by Pruna and one of these has a dedication from the artist to Harold Acton. These works illustrate both the artist’s range and his attraction to increasingly abstract representations of the human body. Harold writes about Pruna saying he was “trying to invent fresh metaphors for our eyes” (Memoirs, p. 151).
Selected paintings by William Acton (1906-1945), Harold’s younger brother, also appear alongside the ‘Parisian Salon’. The brothers, who were close in age, attended Oxford in the same years. William’s artwork further reflects the changing artistic landscape. Harold tells us these works “apart from their vivid resemblance to the originals […] possessed great charm […] he treated his models as romantic busts, their shoulders chiseled into precious marble […] my brother was a Surrealist, but not in his paintings” (Memoirs, p. 388).
A bronze statue, Dancer with Cymbals, signed by Libero Andreotti (1875-1933) appears in this section as well. Like the Barbier folding fan shown in the Fashion and Dance section of the exhibit, the Andreotti sculpture reflects the artistic evolution from the Liberty style to a more geometric and elongated expression found in Art Déco. Even the subject matter is typical of Art Déco; it’s unknown if this was a gift to the Acton family or something they had purchased.
– Francesca Baldry
