15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Where to Be Female, Bohemian and Free in 1890s Paris?
THE CLUB: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris, by Jennifer Dasal
Americans have never gone to Paris quietly. Since the 1860s, when thousands were washed to Europe on a rising swell of wealth, they have, inevitably, turned their gaze on one another.
So it is that the art historian Jennifer Dasal can produce 'The Club,' a full history of a long-forgotten establishment — the belle epoque American Girls' Art Club — based almost entirely on newspaper and magazine articles written by Americans, for Americans, about Americans in Paris.
What was this refuge that inspired such reams of copy — and who were the 'girls' it served? For the most part, they were dedicated artists who had exhausted the training opportunities at home and knew that Paris was where careers were made, and where fellow students provided a ready-made community.
If only, an aspiring Parisienne might have sighed, the newspapers would lay off headlines like 'Martyrs to Art in the French Capital,' with their lurid warnings about starvation, loneliness and ubiquitous foreigners! Conceived as a bulwark against this swirl of dangers, the Club was the brainchild of Helen Newell, wife of the minister of the American cathedral, and Elisabeth Mills Reid, whose husband served as ambassador to France.
It opened in 1893 at 4 Rue de Chevreuse in the Latin Quarter, a neighborhood teeming with art schools, studios, cheap restaurants and fellow Americans. Set around a beautiful secluded garden, it provided cheap, secure lodging for 40-odd women, boasting a library, studio space, exhibition hall, restaurant and a much-commented-upon Sunday afternoon tea, served from a large brass samovar.
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