While cleaning up my writing room this week, I found a slip of paper in a box of old research for Where the Light Falls. It noted that a painting of Les Halles by Jean Béraud was shown at the 1879 Salon (at which Jeanette exhibits) and was now at the Haggin Read More
Picturing a World
Elegant Soirée
August 1, 2016
This one is for Pat, who commented on the last post. Ballroom dancers!
“Anonymity,” my work-in-progress is about Jeanette Palmer’s younger sister, Mattie, who works in publishing in New York City in 1908. Works by Béraud helped me visualize Jeanette's Paris for Where the Light Falls. This one looks to me like a pastel from around 1900 (look at those Gibson Read More
“Anonymity,” my work-in-progress is about Jeanette Palmer’s younger sister, Mattie, who works in publishing in New York City in 1908. Works by Béraud helped me visualize Jeanette's Paris for Where the Light Falls. This one looks to me like a pastel from around 1900 (look at those Gibson Read More
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Pont Neuf
February 22, 2014
Jeepers! I've just noticed that Thursday's post was not published. Better late than never, take a walk on the Pont Neuf!
When Jeanette returns from Pont Aven at the end of August 1879, she and Edward walk along Left Bank of the Seine on a Sunday afternoon. The scene is set farther down river than the Pont Neuf, but Béraud’s painting captures the casual, strolling ease that I wanted readers to feel.
Notice the Morris column advertising kiosk, the grille around the trees, the black-clad Parisiénne, and the little dog—recurring motifs for imagining Paris in this period. Read More
When Jeanette returns from Pont Aven at the end of August 1879, she and Edward walk along Left Bank of the Seine on a Sunday afternoon. The scene is set farther down river than the Pont Neuf, but Béraud’s painting captures the casual, strolling ease that I wanted readers to feel.
Notice the Morris column advertising kiosk, the grille around the trees, the black-clad Parisiénne, and the little dog—recurring motifs for imagining Paris in this period. Read More
Telegrams
October 10, 2013
After Carolus-Duran has accepted Jeanette into his atelier for women, Cousin Effie lends her funds for the first month’s tuition. The paragraph in which Jeanette telegraphs her father with an urgent request for money to repay Effie was trimmed out during editing, but is still there by implication since Judge Palmer’s grim return telegrams remain in the text. And for that implied incident (the incident that to my mind happens!) Béraud provides the perfect illustration. Notice even the white glove on the woman’s left hand (Americans were known for their white cotton gloves). This Parisiénne may be better dressed than Jeanette could afford, but the style seems right for 1879. Read More
Pâtisserie
July 18, 2013
My editor teased me one time about how often my characters go to pâtisseries to buy pastry or have a cup of chocolate. Well, wouldn’t you if there were places like this available? When I invented my fictional Petit Honoré, I did not imagine either so high a ceiling or so grand a space, but I love visiting La Pâtisserie Gloppe via Béraud’s painting. Some of Jeanette and Effie’s visits to bakeries, cafés, and tea shops were edited out, but feel free to re-imagine as many as you like—and if you want to send them to the Gloppe, the address was no. 6, Champs Élysées. They’ll love it! Also, if you know of a teashop or bakery that continues to offer this kind of ambiance and gustatory delight, please let us know in the comments. Read More
Kiosk
June 10, 2013
At the end of their stay in Pont Aven, Amy proclaims herself ready again for the rough and tumble of Paris; and once back in the city, Jeanette discovers that she no longer feels like a new girl. I had a framed print of Béraud’s Kiosk beside my chair as I wrote Where the Light Falls : it set the mood perfectly.
The urbane gentleman on the right is dressed as Edward dresses when he goes out for his walks. What I noticed first, though, were the two women prettily lifting their skirts to negotiate the streets—Baron Haussmann’s clean, clean streets and wide pavements, where a lady could walk in city shoes. Jeanette would have visited this very intersection of the Rue Scribe and Boulevard des Capucines on her way from her bank to the Académie Julian. Read More
The urbane gentleman on the right is dressed as Edward dresses when he goes out for his walks. What I noticed first, though, were the two women prettily lifting their skirts to negotiate the streets—Baron Haussmann’s clean, clean streets and wide pavements, where a lady could walk in city shoes. Jeanette would have visited this very intersection of the Rue Scribe and Boulevard des Capucines on her way from her bank to the Académie Julian. Read More
Afoot in Paris
April 25, 2013
Jeanette walks to and from school every day, at first accompanied by Cousin Effie and eventually on her own with fellow students. I wanted to know how closely she would have been chaperoned. Besides reading social history, I took note of how women were depicted on the streets in paintings. Béraud’s two hatless, gloveless “promenaders” in their neat, black, similar costumes look to me more like shop assistants, out perhaps on an errand, than either fashionable Parisiénnes or girls of dubious virtue. Their chumminess may include an awareness of the man behind them, or it may simply be the giggling companionability of friends. Read More
Boulevard Montmartre
February 11, 2013
In New York City, Jeanette has been told about an art school called the Académie Julian. Now in Paris, in Chapter Eight, as soon as she and Effie have rented an apartment, they set out to find it. The school, which admitted women students (unlike the national École des Beaux-Arts) was located in the Passage des Panaromas, a shopping arcade that ran—and still runs—north from the rue Saint-Marc to the boulevard Montmartre. Jeanette and Effie walk its length and are momentarily baffled when they find themselves here, on the boulevard beside the Theatre des Variétés. I have stood at this very spot; the passage would be to the right if it were in the oil sketch, Read More
The Pont des Arts
January 14, 2013
On her first full day in Paris, Jeanette enters her new life by crossing the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge from the Left Bank to the Louvre. Béraud’s Windy Day illustrates the place; and from the first time I saw it, its tone of urbane self-awareness represented for me Jeanette's move into a bigger world. The self-possessed young woman in the foreground is certainly the very image of the chic Parisiénne that Jeanette would love to become. By its angle of view and the wide horizontal spread of pavement, moreover, the picture emphasizes the physical breadth of public spaces in Paris. Read More