18:20 · three minutes · then 500 m east along boulevard du Montparnasse to stop 4
Albert Marquet, La Gare Montparnasse, 1912. The station stood on this square until the 1960s. Public domain.
Stand on place du 18-Juin-1940, at the foot of rue de Rennes, with the modern station behind you.
▶ Listen · The Swedes and the four hundred francs · 4 min
At the Café de Versailles, which stood at number 3 on this square, Matisse's students met. In 1908 the Swede Isaac Grünewald signed up his friends for the school here. About forty Swedes trained with Matisse; more than half the school was Scandinavian. Two of them, Grünewald and Sigrid Hjertén, met there and married; critics called her "Mrs Grünewald", so she signed every canvas "Hjertén". Not one Finn is recorded.
Up rue de Rennes, 800 m north, lived the Americans who made Matisse. In 1905 Leo Stein called Woman with a Hat "the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen" and bought it: 500 francs asked, 300 refused, not under 450 in writing, 400 accepted. His sister Gertrude sat ninety times for Picasso; told the portrait did not look like her, he said: "She will."
Fun fact
Twenty per cent off the painting that started modern art. The record for a Matisse at auction today: $80.75 million.
Quiz · Five hundred francs asked. What did the buyer pay?
Four hundred.
The story in six panels
1October 1905. A big autumn art show. One room is full of violent colour. Wild beasts!
2A woman in a hat, painted in colours nobody has seen on a face.
3An American collector stops in front of it. The nastiest smear of paint I ever saw.
4He comes back. And back. He wants it.
5The painter asks 500 francs. Refuses 300. Writes: not under 450.
6He takes 400. Twenty per cent off the painting that started modern art.
Drawn in paper-cut style with Gemini from our script; no real person is depicted.
More to look at
The studio at 27 rue de Fleurus, c. 1906; Woman with a Hat hangs top centre. Public domain.Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Brasserie Dumesnil, c. 1908–10, a café by this square. MNAC-Chiado, Lisbon. Artwork public domain; photo Pedro Ribeiro Simões, CC BY 2.0.
