#AtoZChallenge: Stein, Gertrude (Picasso)

In the early 1900’s two Americans, a brother and a sister, became collectors of Pablo Picasso. Gertrude and Leo Stein were patrons of Picasso’s art beginning around 1904 to 1905. They bought an apartment at 27, rue de Fleurus, near the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and lived there until Leo moved out in 1914. Gertrude and her brother started buying Renoirs, Cezannes, Picassos, and Matisses. They were becoming famous in Paris as well as in the U.S. for their smart acquisitions. An art critic for the New York Sun kept readers enlightened about the Steins and their collection. Their brother, Michael, and his wife, Sarah, were also collectors and focused on Matisse’s works.

–Leo, Gertrude, and Michael Stein from an article in Smithsonian Magazine, January 2012.

Leo and Gertrude began to have differences of opinion on many issues and Leo moved out of the apartment and went to Italy. Even though he enjoyed Cezanne’s works the most, he left Gertrude with many of Cezanne’s paintings. Also, he left all the Picassos they had acquired except for a small portrait Picasso had done of Leo.

Leo also did not appreciate the Cubist works as much as Gertrude. When she died, Gertrude had kept most of the works she and Leo collected by Picasso and Juan Gris. Almost all the other artists they collected and later she collected were sold off through time except for the Cubists.

After Leo left, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude’s partner, moved in and became the hostess to Gertrude’s salons where artists and writers would congregate and talk about their art together and with Gertrude. While Stein held court with the artists (mostly men), Alice would treat the wives and girlfriends to tea and food in a separate room. This irked many of the wives.

–Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and their poodle, Basket. Photo for Life Magazine by Carl Mydans

From Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, New York, Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1974:

Among Picasso’s acquaintances who frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier (Picasso’s mistress), Georges Braque (artist), André Derain (artist), Max Jacob (poet), Guillaume Apollinaire (poet), Marie Laurencin (artist, and Apollinaire’s mistress), Henri Rousseau (painter), and Joseph Stella.

Picasso’s famous portrait of Miss Stein:

—Portrait of Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, 1905-06 , oil on canvas, 39-3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.3cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, at the bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946.

From the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

The famous writer and expatriate Gertrude Stein was among the first Americans to respond enthusiastically to European avant-garde art. She held weekly salons in her Paris apartment populated by European and American artists and writers. For Picasso, Stein’s early patronage and friendship was critical to his success. He painted this portrait of her between 1905 and 1906 at the end of his so-called “Rose Period.” He reduces her body to simple masses—a foreshadowing of his adoption of Cubism—and portrays her face like a mask with heavy lidded eyes, reflecting his recent encounter with Iberian sculpture.