Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., so I had to take the day off and go see the Stein Family collection at the Grand Palais, a fabulous exhibition organized by the Grand Palais, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Steins, an American family who moved to Paris in the early 20th century, consisted of Gertrude, an avant-garde writer, who set up house with her brother Leo in Rue de Fleurus, and later lived with her partner Alice Toklas; and her elder brother Michael, who lived with his wife Sarah in nearby Rue Madame. They were the first people to buy Matisses and Picassos and eventually built up one of the most amazing collections of modern art.
The exhibition is divided into eight sections, shedding light on all of the members of the family, and brings together an outstanding ensemble works from the Steins’ various collections: Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Gris. Two of my favorites were Matisse's famous Woman with a Hat and of course Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein, where Stein is shown seated in a large armchair wearing her favorite brown velvet coat.
The Grand Palais, with its beautiful steel and glass vault, is a museum off Champs Elysées that was originally built as an exhibition hall for the Universal Exposition of 1900. Also built for Exposition were the adjacent Petit Palais and the Alexandre III bridge, named after Tsar Alexandre III with whom France signed the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1892.
Here is an interesting panoramic view I found on Wikipedia of what the area looked like at the time of the Exposition.
