Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - PARIS - EMESE PÁPAI: The Stein Family in Paris
EMESE PÁPAI The Stein Family in Paris The salon(s) of the Steins became a legendary feature of the Paris art scene. Born to a family of German-Jewish immigrants in the United States, the two brothers and one sister moved to Paris in 1903. Of the three siblings, Leo, the one in the middle, was the first to settle in Paris, on rue de Fleurus 27, 1 after discovering one night that he was "growing into an artist". His brother Michael moved into a rented flat on the nearby rue Madame with his family a couple of months later. Shortly afterwards, Gertrude, the youngest of the three, moved in with her brother, Leo, and the two continued to share a household until 1913. The Stein family's first stay in Europe dated back to the period between 1874 and 1880. The father, Meyer Stein, who had a successful business in the textile industry, took his family of five to spend a longer period in Vienna and Paris. 2 It was during those years that Leo and Gertrude developed an interest in collecting artworks. The first pieces of their collection consisted of reproductions clipped from colour magazines. During their university years, all three of them collected Japanese prints and antique furniture. They knew William H. Crocker's collection of contemporary art, which was the first American collection with modern works by major French artists. 3 After studying at John Hopkins University of Baltimore for three years (1896-1899)", Leo lived in Florence and London (1900-1902). It was in London that he bought the first piece of his collection: a composition by William Steer. He made plans to write monographs on Mantegna and Dürer, but in the meantime he met the famous art historian, Bernard Berenson, who exerted a powerful influence on him; despite having fundamentally different views on art, the two were mutually inspiring each other for decades. Berenson called Leo's attention to the Paris art dealer, Ambroise Vollard's business on rue Lafitte, where a number of paintings by Cézanne were put on display. 5 Leo was enthusiastic: „[...] here is great mind, a perfect concentration and great control. Cezanne's essential problem is mass and he has succeeded in rendering mass with a vital intensity that is unparalleled in the whole history of painting. No matter what his subject is —the figure, the landscape, still life —there is always this remorseless intensity, this endless unending gripping of the Leo, Gertrude and Michael Stein in the courtyard of their apartment on rue de Fleurus, early 1906 form, the unceasing effort to force in to reveal its absolute self-existing quality of mass," 6 he concluded. He embarked on the systematic and regular collection of Cezanne's works with the acquisition of Aquaduct (cca. 1878). The deal was made possible by the 8,000 francs that the manager of the family fortune, Michael, forwarded to him and his sister in excess of their usual annuity in 1904. This sum enabled Leo to purchase two more paintings by Cézanne—two mid-size bathers —as well as two compositions by Gauguin and Renoir each. 7 In the summer of 1904, when he was in Florence, he took Berenson's advice and spent more time in the home of Charles Loeser, one of the first collectors of Cezanne's works, than he did in the Uffizi and the Pitti together. 8 He was deeply impressed by the personal example of Loeser, who promoted his own artistic tastes among the visitors in order to win them over to the cause of modern art.
