The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (100 page)

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Authors: David Mccullough

Tags: #Physicians, #Intellectuals - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Artists - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Physicians - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris, #Americans - France - Paris, #United States - Relations - France - Paris, #Americans - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #France, #Paris (France) - Intellectual Life - 19th Century, #Intellectuals, #Authors; American, #Americans, #19th Century, #Artists, #Authors; American - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris (France) - Relations - United States, #Paris (France), #Biography, #History

325
Although estimates of the total carnage:
Horne,
The Fall of Paris
, 418.

325
Olin Warner, like Washburne:
“Olin Levi Warner Defense of the Paris Commune,” Archives of American Art.

325
“I hope it will never be my lot”:
Olin Warner to his parents, June 6, 1871, Archives of American Art.

325
The body of the archbishop: Galignani’s Messenger
, June 9, 1871.

325
one of “the most emotional and imposing” services:
Washburne,
Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877
, Vol. II, 185–86.

326
“Paris, the Paris of civilization”: Galignani’s Messenger
, June 3, 1871.

326
Cook’s Tours of London:
Horne,
The Fall of Paris
, 421.

326
By July the Tuileries Garden: Galignani’s Messenger
, July 1, 1871.

326
The Venus de Milo:
Ibid., June 30, August 27, 1871.

327
Everyone leaned forward:
Ibid., August 27, 1871.

327
Lillie Moulton ordered several fine dresses:
De Hegermann-Lindencrone,
In the Courts of Memory, 1858–1875
, 246.

327
Her engagement, too:
Jacobi,
Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi
, 281.

327
“I have passed my last examination”:
Ibid., 286.

327
That a woman had acquired the legal right:
Ibid., 290.

328
Tributes were to be published:
See various newspaper articles, editorials, and tributes in the Washburne Family Scrapbooks, Library of Congress.

328
“Speaking of diplomacy”:
Diary entry of Frank Moore, Paris, September 30, 1871, Frank Moore Papers, NewYork Historical Society.

11. Paris Again
 

The wealth of Cassatt and Sargent family correspondence, in two collections at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, adds enormously to an understanding of the formative years in the lives of both Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. Dr. FitzWilliam Sargent’s letters are particularly important, given that his son John wrote so little about himself.

The best books about Mary Cassatt are those by Nancy Mowll Mathews:
Cassatt and Her Circle; Selected Letters
(1984);
Mary Cassatt
(1987);
Mary Cassatt: A Life
(1994); and
Cassatt: A Retrospective
(1996).

For Sargent, the two essential biographies are
John Sargent
by Evan Charteris, published in 1927, two years after Sargent’s death, and the engagingly written
John Singer Sargent: His Portrait
by Stanley Olson (1986). Of particular appeal, too, are the Sargent vignettes in the letters and reminiscences of his friends Will Low and James Carroll Beckwith (as cited below).

Sargent’s early work is magnificently reproduced and documented in two monumental books by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray,
John Sargent: The Early Portraits
(1998), and
John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1874–1882.

For a comprehensive study of American students and their atelier masters, nothing equals H. Barbara Weinberg’s
The Lure of Paris: Nineteenth-Century American Painters and Their French Teachers
(1991).

PAGE

331
I began to live: Mathews, ed.,
Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters
, 132.

331
“I have never seen”:
James,
Parisian Sketches: Letters to the New York Tribune
,
1875–1876
, 39.

331
To help meet expenses:
Ibid., xiii.

331
“sense of Parisian things”:
Ibid., 3.

332
“decidedly the most”:
Ibid., 21.

332
“looked and looked again”:
Lewis,
The Jameses: A Family Narrative
, 86.

332
Called
The American: James,
The American
, 33.

332
The street was relatively quiet:
Rue de Luxembourg is now rue Cambon. Author’s visit to the street and location of James’s apartment. See also James,
Henry James Letters
, Vol. II, 3.

332
“If you were to see me”:
Ibid., 6.

332
“Considering how nice”:
Ibid.

333
“taken a desperate plunge”:
Ibid., 20.

333
“I am waiting anxiously”:
Ibid., 17.

333
“Love to all in superabundance”:
James,
Henry James Letters
, Vol. II, ed. Edel, 47.

333
He was in Paris to work:
Ibid., 23.

333
“I want the biggest kind of entertainment”:
James,
The American
, 58.

333
“What shall I tell you?”:
James,
Henry James Letters
, Vol. II, ed. Edel, 35.

333
“The spring is now quite settled”:
Ibid., 41.

333
Since the brutal catastrophes: Galignani’s Messenger
, October 5, 1872.

333
In a single week:
Ibid., September 21, 1872.

334
“the recipient of much attention”:
Ibid., October 21, 1872.

334
It is generally acknowledged: Galignani’s Messenger
, January 6, 1872.

335
Will Low, an art student:
Low,
A Painter’s Progress: Six Discourses Forming the Fifth Annual Series of the Scammon Lectures, Delivered Before the Art Institute of Chicago, April, 1910
,146.

335
George Healy, with his wife:
See George P. A. Healy to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, November 11, 1874, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to George P. A. Healy, October 19, 1874, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

335
“We can give garden parties”:
De Mare,
G. P. A. Healy, American Artist
, 270.

335
The Healys had been among:
George P. A. Healy to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, November 5, 1872, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

336
“Healy is strong in portraits”:
Thomas Gold Appleton to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, June 3, 1875, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

336
“This will be an historical picture”: “Souvenir of the Exhibition Entitled Healy’s Sitters or a Portrait Panorama of the Victorian Age,”
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1950, 54.

336
“I go every morning”:
Excerpt from the Diary of Edith Healy, Rome, October 9, 1868, Archives of American Art.

337
Mary Cassatt, too, had been hard hit:
Mathews,
Mary Cassatt: A Life
, 75.

337
In 1866, at twenty-one:
Ibid., 29.

337
I think she has a great deal of talent:
Eliza Haldeman to Mrs. Samuel Haldeman, May 15, 1867, Mathews, ed.,
Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters
, 46.

337
“It is much pleasanter”:
Ibid., 54.

338
“She is only an amateur”:
Mary Cassatt to Lois Cassatt, August 1, 1869, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

338
“Oh how wild I am”:
Mathews, ed.,
Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters
, 77.

338
“The Hôtel de Ville”:
Ibid., 80.

338
“Don’t be disheartened”:
Emily Sartain to her father, February 26, 1872, Moore College of Art.

338
On one excursion:
Ibid., August 4, 1872.

339
I must candidly confess: Galignani’s Messenger
, June 22, 1872.

339
“Velázquez oh!”:
Mathews, ed.,
Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters
, 103.

339
“She astonished me”:
Ibid., 124.

339
Mary Cassatt had been born:
Sweet,
Miss Mary Cassatt: Impressionist from Pennsylvania
, 7.

339
Her father, Robert Simpson Cassatt:
Ibid.

340
But the mother and father:
Ibid., 18.

340
At sixteen Mary:
Mathews,
Mary Cassatt: A Life
, 14.

340
When, at twenty:
Ibid., 26.

340
The summer of 1874:
Ibid., 92.

341
“Miss Cassatt’s tall figure”:
Mathews,
Cassatt: A Retrospective
, 86.

341
Once having seen her:
Ibid.

341
“I felt that Miss Cassatt”:
Mathews,
Mary Cassatt: A Life
, 101.

341
“Miss C. is a tremendous talker”:
Emily Sartain to her father, May 25, 1875, Moore College of Art.

341
Emily went home:
See Mathews, ed.,
Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters
, 70, n. 1.

342
“I would go there”:
Mathews,
Mary Cassatt: A Life
, 114.

342
She took Louisine:
Hale,
Mary Cassatt
, 54.

342
The price was 500 francs:
Ibid.

343
To learn to paint:
Mathews,
Cassatt: A Retrospective
, 195.

343
“happy American youths”:
Weinberg,
The Lure of Paris: Nineteenth-Century American Painters and Their French Teachers
, 199.

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