![Le Bateau-Lavoir, circa 1910](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Le_Bateau-Lavoir%2C_circa_1910.jpg)
The Bateau-Lavoir ("Washhouse Boat") is the nickname of a building in the
Montmartre
Montmartre ( , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by Rue Ca ...
district of the
18th arrondissement of Paris
The 18th arrondissement of Paris (''XVIIIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as ''dix-huitième''.
The arrondissement, known as Butte-Montmartr ...
that is famous in art history as the residence and meeting place for a group of outstanding early 20th-century artists, men of letters, theatre people, and art dealers. It is located at No. 13 Rue Ravignan at Place Emile Goudeau, just below the
Place du Tertre
The Place du Tertre is a square in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France. Only a few streets away from Montmartre's Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and the Lapin Agile, it is near the summit of the city's elevated Montmartre quarter. Place du Ter ...
.
A fire destroyed most of the building in May 1970 and only the façade remained, but it was completely rebuilt in 1978.
History
Formerly a ballroom and piano factory, Bateau Lavoir was
squatted
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
and divided into 20 small workshops in 1889. Distributed along a corridor, small rooms were linked without heating and with a single point of water.
The name "Le Bateau-Lavoir" was coined by French poet
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
. The building was dark and dirty, almost seeming to be scrap pile rather than a dwelling. On stormy days, it swayed and creaked, reminding people of washing-boats on the
Seine River
)
, mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur
, mouth_coordinates =
, mouth_elevation =
, progression =
, river_system = Seine basin
, basin_size =
, tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle
, tributaries ...
, hence the name.
The building stands on a small cobblestone square that was known as Place Ravignan. In 1911, it was rechristened Place Émile Goudeau for
Émile Goudeau (1849–1906), a popular novelist, poet, and journalist who founded
Les Hydropathes, a renowned and famous literary club. The square now has a
Wallace fountain
Wallace Fountains are public drinking fountains named after, financed by and roughly designed by Sir Richard Wallace. The final design and sculpture is by Wallace's friend Charles-Auguste Lebourg. They are large cast-iron sculptures scattered thro ...
and is planted with
horse chestnut
The genus ''Aesculus'' ( or ), with species called buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with six species n ...
trees.
Maxime Maufra
Maxime Maufra (17 May 1861 – 23 May 1918) was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer.
Life
Maufra first began painting at 18. He was encouraged to do so by two artists from Nantes such as the brothers Charles Ledu ...
(1863–1918) was the first noted artist to take up residence in Bateau-Lavoir, around 1890.
Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauvism, Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually ...
and
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
took up residence between 1900 and 1904. After 1904 more artists and writers moved in, including
Otto van Rees,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
,
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan (born Pierre Dumarchey, February 26, 1882 – June 27, 1970), was a French novelist and songwriter.
His novel '' Quai des Brumes'' was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starring ...
,
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...
,
André Salmon
André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.
Biography
André Salmon was born in P ...
,
Pablo Gargallo
Pablo EmilioorPau Emili Gargallo (5 January 1881 – 28 December 1934), known simply as Pau or Pablo Gargallo, was a Spanish sculptor and painter.
Life and career
Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, with his family in 1888, where ...
,
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
and
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
.
It became an unofficial club that included artists
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
,
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
,
André Derain
André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
Biography
Early years
Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. I ...
,
Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French Fauvism, Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramic art, ceramics and textile as well as decorative schemes for public bu ...
,
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian Avant-garde#:~:text=The avant-garde (/ˌ,art, culture, or society., avant-garde as a member of the Cubism, Cubist ...
, Modigliani,
Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens (; 28 March 1838 – 23 March 1921) was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.
Biography
Laurens was born in Fourquevaux and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexand ...
,
Maurice Utrillo
Maurice Utrillo (), born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painte ...
,
Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Cr ...
,
María Blanchard
María Blanchard (born María Gutiérrez-Cueto y Blanchard;
spanish-art.org; accessed 4 August 2015. ...
,
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
and
Louis Marcoussis
Louis Marcoussis, formerly Ludwik Kazimierz Wladyslaw Markus or Ludwig Casimir Ladislas Markus, (1878 or 1883, Łódź – October 22, 1941, Cusset) was a painter and engraver of Polish origin who lived in Paris for much of his life and became ...
; writers
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
,
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play ''Ubu Roi'' (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, ...
,
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
,
Gustave Coquiot
Gustave Coquiot (24 September 1865 – 6 June 1926) was a French art critic and writer. A collector of paintings by Maurice Utrillo, he also was one of Auguste Rodin's secretaries.
Theatre
* 1904: ''Deux heures du matin, quartier Marbeuf'' ...
, Cremnitz (Maurice Chevrier),
Paul Fort
Jules-Jean-Paul Fort (1 February 1872 – 20 April 1960) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d'Art (1890–93). He also founded and edi ...
, André Warnod,
Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet (18 June 1903 – 12 December 1923) was a French novelist and poet whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone.
Early life
Radiguet was born in Saint-Maur, Val-de-Marne, close to Paris, th ...
, and
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
; actors
Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin (; 8 May 1885 – 11 December 1949) was a French actor, theater manager and director.
Career
Dullin began his career as an actor in melodrama:185 In 1908, he started his first troupe with Saturnin Fabre, the ''Théâtre de Foir ...
,
Harry Baur
Harry Baur (12 April 1880 – 8 April 1943) was a French actor.
Initially a stage actor, Baur appeared in about 80 films between 1909 and 1942. He gave an acclaimed performance as the composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the biopic ''Beethoven's Gr ...
, and
Gaston Modot
Gaston Modot (31 December 1887 – 20 February 1970) was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of great French directors.
Biography
Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th cen ...
; and art dealers
Ambroise Vollard
Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) was a French art dealer who is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotio ...
,
Clovis Sagot,
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and
Berthe Weill
Berthe Weill ( Paris 1865 – 1951) was a French art dealer who played a vital role in the creation of the market for twentieth-century art with the manifestation of the Parisian Avant-Garde. Although she is much less known than her well-establ ...
.
While residing at the Bateau-Lavoir, Picasso painted works such as ''
Young Girl with a Flower Basket
''Young Girl with a Flower Basket'' (French: ''Fillette à la corbeille fleurie'' or ''Jeune fille nue avec panier de fleurs'' or ''Fillette nue au panier de fleurs'' or ''Le panier fleuri'') is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso fro ...
'', and ''
Garçon à la pipe
''Garçon à la Pipe'' (English: ''Boy with a Pipe'') is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1905 when Picasso was 24 years old, during his Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre area of Paris. The painting ...
'' (''Boy with a Pipe'') in 1905, and one of his most noted works, ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' (''The Young Ladies of Avignon'', originally titled ''The Brothel of Avignon'') is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum o ...
'' in 1907, considered by art historians as a
proto-Cubist painting (the precursor of a movement that became known as
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
).
Following the outbreak of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
in 1914, creative artists living at the Bateau-Lavoir and in the neighbourhood began moving elsewhere, mainly to
Montparnasse
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ...
.
Notable residents
*
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
*
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
*
Jose De Creeft
José Mariano de Creeft (November 27, 1884 - September 11, 1982) was a Spanish-born American artist, sculptor, and teacher known for modern sculpture in stone, metal, and wood, particularly figural works of women. His 16 ft bronze ''Alice i ...
*
Tibor Csernus
*
Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauvism, Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually ...
*
Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich (10 July 1878 – 9 March 1943) was a German painter and sculptor of Jewish origin. A part of the first generation of abstract painters in Western art, Freundlich was a great admirer of cubism.
Life
Freundlich was born in ...
*
Pablo Gargallo
Pablo EmilioorPau Emili Gargallo (5 January 1881 – 28 December 1934), known simply as Pau or Pablo Gargallo, was a Spanish sculptor and painter.
Life and career
Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, with his family in 1888, where ...
*
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...
*
Auguste Herbin
Auguste Herbin (29 April 1882 – 31 January 1960) was a French Painting, painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubism, Cubist and abstract art, abstract paintings consisting of colorful Geometry, geometric figures. He co-founded the gr ...
*
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
*
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan (born Pierre Dumarchey, February 26, 1882 – June 27, 1970), was a French novelist and songwriter.
His novel '' Quai des Brumes'' was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starring ...
*
Maxime Maufra
Maxime Maufra (17 May 1861 – 23 May 1918) was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer.
Life
Maufra first began painting at 18. He was encouraged to do so by two artists from Nantes such as the brothers Charles Ledu ...
*
Ksenia Milicevic
Ksenia Milicevic (born September 15, 1942) is a French painter, architect and town planner. She is based in Paris, with a studio in Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre and also maintains a base in South West France.
Life
Ksenia Milicevic was born in ...
*
Igor Mitoraj
Igor Mitoraj (Polish pronunciation: ; 26 March 1944 – 6 October 2014) was a Polish artist and sculptor. Known for his fragmented sculptures of the human body often created for large-scale public installations, he is considered one of the most ...
*
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
*
Fernande Olivier
Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...
*
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
*
Augusta Preitinger
Juliana Augusta "Guus" Preitinger (also known as Guus van Dongen) (18 October 1878, in Cologne – 21 January 1946, in Paris) was a German-born Dutch painter who lived most of her adult life in Paris. She married the painter Kees van Dongen, ...
*
Adya van Rees-Dutilh
*
Otto van Rees
*
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
*
Endre Rozsda
*
André Salmon
André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.
Biography
André Salmon was born in P ...
*
Ardengo Soffici
Ardengo Soffici (7 April 1879 – 19 August 1964) was an Italian writer, painter, poet, sculptor and intellectual.
Early life
Soffici was born in Rignano sull'Arno, near Florence. In 1893 his family moved to the latter city, where he stud ...
*
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian Avant-garde#:~:text=The avant-garde (/ˌ,art, culture, or society., avant-garde as a member of the Cubism, Cubist ...
Notable events
In 1908,
a celebration banquet for
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
destroyed a number of his friends' paintings while in an alcoholic rage in the Bateau-Lavoir, according to memoirs of his daughter,
Jeanne.
In popular culture
The Le Bateau-Lavoir is a featured setting in the 2018 season of ''
Genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...
'', which focuses on the life and art of Pablo Picasso.
It is also featured in the 1995
Eric Rohmer
The given name Eric, Erich, Erikk, Erik, Erick, or Eirik is derived from the Old Norse name ''Eiríkr'' (or ''Eríkr'' in Old East Norse due to monophthongization).
The first element, ''ei-'' may be derived from the older Proto-Norse ''* ain ...
film ''
Les Rendez-vous de Paris
''Rendezvous in Paris'' (french: Les Rendez-vous de Paris) is a 1995 French romantic comedy anthology film written and directed by Éric Rohmer.
The film consists of three loosely connected episodes revolving around chance meetings in Paris: "Le ...
''.
See also
*
La Ruche, in Montparnasse, Paris
References
External links
"Cubism Birthplace Bateau-Lavoir"BlogSpot article with additional photographs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bateau-Lavoir, Le
Buildings and structures in Paris
French art
History of Paris
Painting in Paris
Buildings and structures in the 18th arrondissement of Paris
Montmartre
Pablo Picasso
Amedeo Modigliani
Guillaume Apollinaire
Burned buildings and structures in France