Gertrude Stein was an American art collector, poet and writer. She was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Her father was a successful real estate investor. When she was three her parents and four siblings moved to Vienna and later Paris. They returned to America in 1878 and moved to Oakland, California.
Mama Stein died when Gertrude was fourteen and Papa at seventeen. Her oldest Michael took over the family business holdings at the age of twenty-six. She was sent to live with her uncle in Baltimore with her sister in 1877. Radcliffe College was home from 1893 to 1897. The psychologist William James was her teacher. She ran experiments on normal motor automatis with another student and James. The phenomenon was thought to occur when one bisected their attention between two simultaneous intelligent activates.
Gertrude Stein graduated in 1898. She enrolled into Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She flunked out during her fourth year. The male dominated medical field led to her depression as she turned to writing and alternate forms of love. Her brother Leo moved to London in 1902. She followed. The two moved to Paris and ran a gallery from 1903 to 1914. It was furnished with furniture from the Renaissance.
Art Collectors
Leo grew the business. The siblings met Paul Cézanne. They recognized the future. Picasso painted the Portrait of Gertrude Stein in 1906. Pablo cemented it. Gertrude was the first to look past the canvas. The ethos was fixated on the magnum opus. She recognized the humanity of the painter. The acquisition of the peripheral was as import as the masterpiece. The collection and impetus widened.
Henry McBride of the New York Sun transcribed the Stein’s arrival. The reverberations hit America. Time passed. Resentment began. Renoir and Matisse were mounted on the walls. Several works by Henri Manguin, Pierre Bonnard, Honoré Daumier, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were procured. Resentment festered. Leo relocated and the art was divided.
The brother retained sixteen Renoirs, a personal sketch of Picasso and single Cézanne canvas. Gertrude was left with the Picasso and Matisse paintings and everything else. The two never spoke again until an accidental street meeting in Paris after World War I. The conversation was brief. The rift after was permanent. The Steins’ never spoke to each other again.
Aftermath and Writing
Gertrude continued to collect Picasso as he shifted to Cubism and the works of Juan Gris Francis Rose and André Masson. Her personality forged the legacy, but the brother was the true appraiser. The founding director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art Alfred Barr Jr. claimed that Leo was the most distinguished connoisseur of the twentieth century. History proved the assertion true.
Gertrude was a writer. She started to submit her works for publication in Paris. Three Lives was published in 1909 and the first to earn critical acclaim. American writer and editor Mildred Aldrich connected her with Mabel Dodge Luhan of the Taos art colony. The friendship blossomed and the affluent heiress stimulated Stein’s legend in the United States. Stein returned to America in late 1934. Thirty years had passed. Her presence melted mainstream media. Front page publications littered the newspapers as a prelude to her lecture tour.
The six-month circuit crossed thirty-seven cities in twenty-three states. Her presence was compelling. She was invited to tea with the First Lady Elanor Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. and met with Charlie Chaplin in California. Gertrude left in 1935 as a celebrity and with a Random House publishing contract. She flourished as time passed.
Gertrude Stein passed away on July 27, 1946 after stomach cancer surgery in Paris. She was seventy-two years old and buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Stein asked her partner Alice “What is the answer?” during her last moments before the operation. Toklas said there was no answer. Gertrude said then there is no question. Alice B. Toklas was put to rest alongside her in 1967.
Gertrude Stein Selected Works
| Title | Year |
|---|---|
| Three Lives | 1909 |
| White Wines | 1913 |
| Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms | 1914 |
| Four Saints in Three Acts | 1929 |
| The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | 1933 |
| Blood on the Dining Room Floor | 1933 |
| Portraits and Prayers | 1934 |
| Lectures in America | 1935 |
| Everybody’s Autobiography | 1937 |
| Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights | 1938 |
| Paris France | 1940 |
| Ida A Novel | 1941 |
| The Mother of Us All | 1945 |
“You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.”
– Gertrude Stein
