The Art Club's History

The Art Club's History

In the growing American colony of Paris in the early 1890s, a network of social, artistic, and religious relationships led to the birth of what would eventually become Reid Hall. Particularly relevant are ties to the Church of the Holy Trinity (the American Cathedral), its Latin Quarter chapel, and the American Art Association of Paris. A key figure in this constellation was Elisabeth Mills Reid, whose philanthropic vision brought together women artists, students, wealthy patrons, atelier masters, art critics, and collectors. 

While thousands of American artists traveled to Paris for study between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I, the American artists’ clubs, and in particular the AAAP and the American Girls’ Club (AGC), sought to revise ideas of bohemian culture by establishing a hermetic American enclave in Paris (Burns, "Revising Bohemia" 99).

More than a hermetic enclave, the Girls' Art club empowered young women, providing not only a safe haven but also an important networking arena. As Jane Mayo Roos notes in her study of women artists in nineteenth-century France:

Female bonding seems to be a much over-looked phenomenon in the development of serious women artists, and although male teachers and colleagues certainly provided encouragement and support, the presence of women allies could go a long way toward countering the gender prejudices of the period (169).

American Women Artists in Paris

Académie Vitti
Photograph of the atelier of the Académie Vitti, ca. 1905. Wikipedia
Photograph of the Atelier at the Académie Julian, 1885. Library of Congress
Photograph of the Atelier at the Académie Julian, 1885. Library of Congress
One of the Académies
Photograph of the Atelier at the Académie Colarossi, ca. 1890. Wikipedia

During her husband’s tenure as American ambassador to France from 1889 – 1892, Elisabeth Mills Reid lived in Paris and "[...] became deeply interested in the exposed condition of daughters of Uncle Sam, who came to study art. Unfamiliar with the language and the people, lonely, far from home, and often poor, these had no chance for the right kind of companionship" (The Nashville Tennessean A6). Indeed, many young American women had contacted the embassy with tales of woe and difficulties. The American press fueled apprehension back home by describing the pitfalls awaiting solitary, unchaperoned young women in the bohemian quarters of Paris. Journalists reveled in detailing the many dangerous and alluring features of city life that would test any woman's moral compass:

To economize, a young woman could rent a furnished room in a building where running water was available from one faucet on each floor. In her small chamber she would eat, sleep, wash, paint, entertain, and keep 'open house for all sorts of men' (Mildred Stapley, as quoted in Dennison 32).

This negative perception was very much alive in the Reids' social circle. One of their acquaintances, Mrs. William W. Newell, wife of a Presbyterian clergyman, was deeply concerned about the moral welfare of the growing population of young Americans living in the "disreputable" neighborhoods of the Left Bank. Backed by leaders at the Church of the Holy Trinity, the Newells "open[ed] the doors of their apartment on Rue de Rennes to American students for informal religious services and homelike fellowship" (Albright 1993). According to Caro Lloyd, they: "[...] began by inviting the students to their home Sunday evenings, and many came. If there were not chairs enough, they sat on the floor. Mr. Newell gave a talk, and then there were singing, refreshments, and a sociable time afterward" (60). In 1891, with financial support from Elisabeth Mills Reid, the Newells established the "American Girls' Reading Room" in an apartment at 19 rue Vavin, within the so-called "American corner" of the neighborhood (Allen 453). They hosted teas and informal get-togethers for young women and organized weekly co-ed socials for students on Sunday evenings (Allen 450).

The success of these early efforts inspired Reid to set up a permanent home base for women art students in Paris. In 1892, she began to actively search for a suitable space for a residence and clubhouse.

Au Quartier Latin, Mucha
Poster by Alphonse Mucha, ca. 1892. Artnet
Poster, Grasset
Poster by Eugène Grasset, ca. 1890. Colletti Gallery

Rev. Newell was deputized to conduct English-language church services for the many young students in the Latin Quarter, backed once more by Holy Trinity leaders and by the American Art Association of Paris (which was then headquartered at 131 boulevard du Montparnasse). The inaugural services were held on October 8, 1891 in the name of St. Luke, patron saint of artists and physicians, inside a studio at 56 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Their immense popularity led Rev. Dr. Morgan of Holy Trinity to secure a larger space at 5 rue de la Grande Chaumière, in what would become the third garden of the Girls’ Art Club. A simple corrugated iron chapel was erected on the site, funded by an anonymous donor (probably Elisabeth Mills Reid), and St. Luke's opened on November 13, 1892 (Allen 448-456). The vacant property surrounding St. Luke’s (4 rue de Chevreuse) was owned by the Keller family – Reid quickly realized that this was the perfect space for her new venture.

Steps from the Luxembourg Gardens and nestled within the heart of the 6th arrondissement, the rue de Chevreuse was an ideal location for students of the arts. Paul Cezanne had a studio just across the street at number 5, while Whistler's studio was located just behind the garden on the corner of rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and rue de la Grande Chaumière. The Chevreuse property, characterized as a "rambling yellow structure, which had a large courtyard and garden" was well-suited for the type of residence Reid wanted to provide for American women (Dennison 33) . It would not only offer students the comforting prospect of secure housing, but it would also ensure "a circle of proper sociability" and "association with young women of their own ideas and ideals" (San Francisco Call, November 21, 1909, 4).

Inspecting the property at 4 rue de Chevreuse, Mrs. Reid, like so many before her, was enchanted by the quiet courtyard and the old garden extending to 5 rue de la Grande Chaumière. She also responded to the artistic ambiance of Montparnasse [...]. Typically, Mrs. Reid saw the house in terms of social usefulness [...] (Allen 453).

Reid decided to lease the property for several years, restoring and furnishing it to create a comfortable, cozy setting in which American women artists could thrive.

American Art Association of Paris

Photo of  AAAP headquarters, 74 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Burns
Photo of AAAP headquarters, 74 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Burns
Photo of St. Luke's in the Club's back garden
Photograph of St. Luke's in the Club's back garden, n.d. RH Archives

The American Art Association of Paris (AAAP) was founded by painter A.A. Anderson, who secured its first headquarters and ran the organization until 1895, when he ceded control to Rodman Wanamaker, son of the department store magnate. The only other organization that served this community was the Paris Society of American Painters, the “[…] old guard of American expatriate artists, who had been academically trained in Paris in the 1860s and who began to exhibit collectively between 1890 and 1894” (Burns "AAAP" 5).

Anderson established the AAAP to host exhibitions for male American artists and to provide them with a clubhouse. He literally stumbled upon an ideal old building on the boulevard du Montparnasse, which enabled him to realize a dream he had nurtured for years:

He had been a student in Paris, too, in his time, with no friend to direct him and no place to go to for advice or associations. He knew that there were many who were tired and homesick and made unfit for work, just as he had been the first year of this stay. And the dream waxed broad and long and founded a place for these fellows to assemble – a place where they could feel at home and which they could make a home of; a place where their own tongue was spoken and where their own country was most thought of; a place where patriotism was nourished and kept alive (Wuerpel 5).

The AAAP celebrated its formal opening at 131 boulevard du Montparnasse with much fanfare on May 24, 1890. Whitelaw Reid was among the guest speakers, demonstrating his support for the initiative:

It is a movement originating among American artists in Paris, intended for American artists and thought likely to do some service in the development of American art. It presents a plan for enabling a large number of young art students in a strange city to help themselves and increase both their strength and their comfort by associating their efforts. It offers an agreeable headquarters and a common meeting ground for such of these young men as have not forgotten their Americanism or lost their desire for American news, American faces and some features of the life they left at home. We are here in the heart of the Latin Quarter. There is not much in it, at first sight, to save young men fresh from the new world from a great sense of freedom and loneliness; yet nowhere else in Europe is there such a concentration of young Americans studying for professions; there are probably not a third as many students of art. A few go to Munich and a few to Rome or elsewhere in Italy, but, aside from these, almost all the students from a nation that numbers sixty-two millions of people, who seek instruction in art anywhere in the old world, are gathered within a mile or two of this spot. The organizers of this Association assure me that there are at this moment fifteen hundred American art students in Paris (Whitelaw Reid, cited in Wuerpel 25).

Other guest speakers included renowned painter, sculptor, and École des Beaux-Arts professor Jean-Léon Gérôme, as well as the Marquis de Rochambeau, both of whom applauded the Association’s objectives to support American male artists in Paris and host annual exhibitions.

The early years of the AAAP were detailed by E.H. Wuerpel in his comprehensive 1894 overview, which described the spaces and activities of its first clubhouse. Throughout its existence, the AAAP had a “symbiotic relationship” with St. Luke’s Chapel (Allen 478-479).

As its membership grew so did the needs of the Association, which sought to bring artists into contact with journalists, businessmen, and musicians. Its headquarters were eventually moved to an elegant and historic building near the Institut de France on the Quai de Conti, overlooking the Seine. The formal opening was held on July 4, 1897, with remarks from the American Ambassador. With the passage of time, AAAP leadership recognized that the Quai de Conti location was not fulfilling its primary goal of offering a comfortable home for artists. They thus decided to return to the Latin Quarter in 1902 and resumed men’s club activities at 74 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Their new headquarters was perfect, "designed and built by a wealthy artist," which afforded "every convenience interiorly, while its exterior [presented] a picturesque charm, in its irregular architecture, and its old-world gate" (McProud 67). This club had all the space and resources necessary for American male art students to socialize and publicly exhibit their work: galleries, a library stocked with over 4000 volumes, reading rooms, a restaurant, and even a billiards room (Allen 463). The AAAP hosted "exhibitions of paintings and sculpture [...] at regular intervals, and each month members are given entertainments in the way of musical and literary evenings, as well as by smokers, monotype evenings and dances, to which friends are invited" (Who's Who in Paris Anglo-American Colony 1905, 126-127). 

The Association offered a haven for American men through 1909, when it went bankrupt. 

The American Girls’ Art Club is Born

Reid Hall's garden, illustration by H.W. Faulkner, Harper's Bazaar, September 1902, volume 36, issue 9, pg. 757. Member of the Art Students' League (1885-1887), Faulkner lived in Paris from c.1902-1908 and attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Raphael Colin's Academy. He exhibited at the 1898 Paris Salon and was an honorary member of the American Art Association. He died in Connecticut in 1940
Reid Hall's garden, illustration by H.W. Faulkner, Harper's Bazaar, September 1902, volume 36, issue 9, pg. 757. Member of the Art Students' League (1885-1887), Faulkner lived in Paris from c.1902-1908 and attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Raphael Colin's Academy. He exhibited at the 1898 Paris Salon and was an honorary member of the American Art Association. He died in Connecticut in 1940
Drawing of Reid Hall seen from its second garden, n.d.
Drawing of Reid Hall seen from its second garden, ca. 1894. Aylward, p. 601

The American Girls' Art Club opened on October 16, 1893 at 4 rue de Chevreuse. Over the next 20 years, its name continuously evolved: it was variously called The American Art Students’ Club, The American Students’ Club for Women, and The American Art Students’ Home, among others (Allen 453).

In a very comprehensive article written for Scribner’s Magazine in November 1894, Emily Meredyth Aylward profiled the new club. Her article was an ode to this Parisian oasis that was created, funded, and carefully overseen from afar by Elisabeth Mills Reid. Aylward’s introduction to the rue de Chevreuse is worth highlighting for its lofty evocation:

No spot more calculated to thrill the imagination of artistic American youth could well have been chosen than this quaint corner of Paris. Every stone as an historic art-association. Along those narrow streets artists have always swung away up in those lofty attics, student-philosophers have dreamed their dreams, and poets have sung their songs to the eternal hallowing of every brick and stone. Every reminiscence is inspiring, and the present actual surroundings are, in addition, brimful of interest and practical advantage. […] When the American girl first sets foot in the rue de Chevreuse […], she begins for the first time to associate narrow streets with beauty and picturesqueness, instead of, as heretofore, with neglect and decay. There is here no filth and squalor, but order, refinement, and above all – she feels it, the atmosphere exhales it – an unspeakable romance (598).

Indeed, the site could not have been better chosen for both budding and established artists. At the center of the Latin Quarter in bohemian Montparnasse, the rue de Chevreuse is just minutes away from the Luxembourg Gardens, the École des Beaux-Arts, all the famed art galleries, and the Sorbonne. The neighborhood was literally bursting with artists’ studios, inexpensive art academies led by world-renowned artists, and vibrant café terraces, restaurants, and brasseries.

The Girls' Art Club’s success was immediate, as it developed into a lively community of young women with shared interests and passions. More importantly, it provided residents with security and the comforts of home in what was then the epicenter of the art world. The Club “served as a counterforce to the perceived bohemianism of young American women in the city” (Dennison 32).

Unfortunately, its early triumphs were almost derailed by administrative squabbles. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported on March 4, 1894 about "a long series of quarrels and intrigues" that ended with "the disappearance of the matron, Mrs. Irvine" (10). According to the New York Herald (October 12, 1893), Irvine, sister of the American illustrator, Rose Müeller-Sprague, for the St. Nicholas Magazine, had led the Club since its opening in 1893 (NY Herald, October 12, 1893).

The March 4 article described the Club's early governance by a board of American women living in Paris, led by a certain Mrs. Monroe. Mrs. Newell, whose husband had founded St. Luke’s Chapel, was apparently a board-appointed "monitor in the establishment." Through "incessant bickering and heartburning," Newell apparently "demoralized the servants and prejudiced the creditors," which put Irvine in a difficult position, leading her to abandon the Club. When her husband died in January 1894, Mrs. Newell also left Paris, sending her 20-year-old son to the Club to defuse the situation. He seemed to make matters worse by claiming that a portion of the Club's furniture belonged to his mother, while ignoring creditors' demands for repayment and servants' pleas for unpaid wages.

Reid or another member of the board must have intervened since an 1895 article by Mildred Madison describes a warm and comfortable atmosphere where "[...] jollity reigns [...] mingling itself with serious and earnest work" (6). The same article mentions a certain Mme Des Cressoniers as the director. 

The Club remained open and 4 rue de Chevreuse continued to welcome women art students for two more decades.

American Art Students' Club
Photograph of the American Art Students Club, n.d. RH Archives
Art Club, ca. 1910
Photograph of the Girls' Art Club, ca. 1910, RH Archives

From its inception, the Girls’ Art Club maintained cordial relations with the AAAP, owing to their shared mission of supporting young American artists in Paris. But the clubs were not universally popular with all members of the colony. Many critical, firsthand accounts have emerged from young women who chose not to live at 4 rue de Chevreuse because they wanted to know French people and immerse themselves in French culture. Even Club residents recognized its rather maidenly, close-minded atmosphere:

The club-house is cheery and quiet. At most, it accommodates thirty-five girls. Its simple stipulation is that a girl must be studying one of the four arts. Widows and married women are excluded. Besides these rules there are no restrictions on individual freedom, and yet there are no irregularities. This, no doubt, is because the club presents nothing to appeal to the tastes of other than the refined and serious. Indeed, I think that those wishing to leave the straight and narrow path for a gambol on the highway would find the club an appallingly virtuous place (Rowland 758).

Several modern scholars have seized on the perspectives of these dissenting artists, arguing that the American clubs were, in effect, discrete Anglophone islands that not only protected their community but prevented residents from forging any real connection to Parisian life. In Chez Charlotte and Fin-de-Siècle Montparnasse, John Crombie claims that both the Girls' Club and the AAAP virtually sealed off "[...] the transient proto-expatriates from the world around. The self-imposed language barrier - English-speakers only were welcome at their services and functions - together with the primary allegiance paid by most American students to strict academic canons, combined to turn what was initially a loose throng of individuals into a cohesive and self-contained monoglot colony, all but proof against the innovatory currents" (45).

Emily Burns also evoked these "tensions between acculturation and insularity," noting that the American artists' clubs "emphasized an insular experience" and "sheltered American artists from the foreign landscape" ("Revising Bohemia" 99).

Though this perception is not totally unfounded, our own research demonstrates that the women who lived, worked, and studied at the Girls’ Art Club spent a great deal of time with French artists, instructors, merchants, and classmates. They traveled to other parts of France to paint and sketch the landscapes and people; they journeyed all over Europe, Asia, and North Africa to see art and experience diverse cultures; and they formed friendships with art students from a number of other countries. The Club was a sanctuary, not a prison, even if Reid and other benefactors had privately expressed concerns about the social and moral dangers of the wider Paris art community.

It is the nucleus of student life in the quarter, and from the very existence of this center of American life in a strange land, the lonely newcomer feels a sense of comfort and protection (Taylor 489).

Image of the first courtyard, in front of the entrance to 4 rue de Chevreuse,  from The San Francisco Examiner, 7 April 1895, 24
Image of the first courtyard, in front of the entrance to 4 rue de Chevreuse, from The San Francisco Examiner, 7 April 1895, p. 24

Inside the Club

A resident's private room, c. 1902. New York Herald
Photograph of a resident's private room, 1902. New York Herald, p. 1
A resident's  studio, 1909. Town & Country
Photograph of a resident's studio, 1909. Town & Country
The room of the directress. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1900
Drawing of the room of the directress. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1900, p. 34

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Club doubled from 25 residents to 50, attracting American women artists because it provided affordable housing in a comfortable setting. An 1898 article published by E.L. Good in The Catholic World tells us just how cheaply art students could live in the Latin Quarter in this period: "An American boy or girl may live very comfortably at the American Girls' or Boys' Club for sixty cents a day tout compris" (456).

But the Girls' Club was more than just a boarding house; it offered many amenities to foster a sense of community and individual wellbeing: art studios, a well-stocked library, a restaurant, a large garden, and regular social activities organized specifically for their pleasure or education, including lectures, concerts, art exhibitions, religious services, dances, and, especially, French lessons. The Club was also a popular cause among wealthy members of the American community: gifts including tableware, a grand piano, and subsidies for specific events enhanced the facilities and expanded the range of activities on offer. 

By 1907, other student clubs had appeared in different parts of Paris (including a Lodge run by Holy Trinity) and, according to Sterling Heilig of The Baltimore Sun, when one club initiated a service, the others would follow suit (15). But the Girls' Art Club seemed to have the upper hand and its popularity only grew as the years passed.

An 1895 French article characterized the oasis that was 4 rue de Chevreuse in very flattering terms:

The artistic circle of young American women occupies an entire hotel of beautiful appearance between courtyard and garden. The light color of the facade, its red tiled roof, the climbing plants that appear everywhere give a charming aspect to this pretty residence. Inside, wide stairs, many corridors. The circle contains fifty rooms, large or small, two reception rooms, a huge dining room, a library, and a reading room. Large windows light them up. On the garden side, a large veranda runs along the first floor, the columns that support it are garnished with creeping vines. It is here that before setting to work, the young American women, casually stretched out in hammocks, recreate themselves at the sight of a magnificent garden with dark beds, lush green shrubs and large ancient trees. It is an old garden, one of those delightful corners where green lawns abound with flowers and roses. The noise outside the big city never disturbs this asylum of calm and purity (translated from French, “Cercle artistique”).

An article by Maude Andrews in the Atlanta Constitution describes the Club in 1899, claiming that year by year it had improved in its comfort and management, with its artistic beauty supposedly increasing on a monthly basis:

The prettiest, perhaps, was the tea room, with its artistic approach through an open court into an entresol fitted up in Turkish stuffs and leading the way, on its turn, to an enchanting little pompelian stairway with pompelian red walls on either side. The long tea room had its walls hung in Whistlerian gray stuff and brightened by softly harmonious Japanese prints and some stunningly fine artistic photographs taken by the girls themselves. There was a canopy and palms and a long tea table at one end; and there were girls everywhere […] (6).

Residents' rooms ranged from a handful of very small and inexpensive nooks on the fourth floor to larger, more spacious accommodations with windows that could be shared by two students to defray costs. Each room was equipped with a coal stove and, according to Aylward, the women purchased their own weekly sacks of coal and bundles of wood, choosing to light, extinguish, and rekindle their own fires for the sake of economy (600). Caro Lloyd detailed the interior of one bedroom in 1894:

 A typical room is that of two Vassar girls who, through much traveling, have learned to quickly make homelike quarters: the beds disguised as divans, the washstand screened, the writing-table where the long home letters are written, and everywhere curios gathered in their wanderings - peasant hats, Syrian scarfs, Dutch mugs. studies at the Sorbonne, hence her shelves of French books, and the other is an art student. She has been painting "still life;" on the floor stand an enormous pumpkin and two Dutch water-jugs. (60-61). 

The Club's dining room, located on the ground floor, was Mrs. Newell’s “long-cherished plan,” since many young students ate badly in their garret rooms or at cheap restaurants (Lloyd 60). Silver, china, and linen donated by the American expatriate community lent an air of sophistication to every meal. The dining hall was decorated with a large frieze that had been brought as a dinner gift by a group of male American architecture students from the École des Beaux-Arts. It featured “ducks, geese, strutting gobblers, and every fowl known to be edible, the parade being interrupted at intervals by exhibition pumpkins, grapes, and all-manner of dining room fruit” (Breekons, 38). Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served and the Club was lauded for enabling each student to "order as little or great a variety as she chooses, according to her appetite or purse." (Aylward 600). The à-la-carte system was later changed to a “prix fixe” option as part of a room and board plan. Lloyd details the menu choices in 1895:

The Parisian breakfast of coffee and a roll is five cents, or chocolate and roll six; oatmeal with milk is six cents. A luncheon of meat, a vegetable, and dessert costs from fifteen to twenty cents. Here is the menu of a recent dinner: Soupe aux haricots, 4 cents; gigot de mouton garni de riz, 10 cents; boeuf roti purée, 9 cents; riz créole, 4 cents; carrotes béchamel, 4 cents; purée de pommes, 4 cents; salade chicorée, 4 cents; petite Suisse, 3 cents; fromage camembert, 3 cents; gâteau à la crême, 4 cents; poire et raisins, 5 cents; café noir, 3 cents (60).

The Library
Photograph of the Library in the Girls' Art Club, 1903. Mc Proud, p. 78
Drawing of the library/reading room. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1900
Drawing of the library/reading room. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1900, p. 34
Reading room, ca. 1905
Photograph of the reading room, c. 1905. Mason 46.

The Club's library, open from the early morning until 10pm, was much appreciated by both residents and non-residents (women students from the neighborhood were granted visiting privileges in the early 20th century). "Besides files of the leading American and French papers, the current magazines are supplied and the room is lined from floor to ceiling with book shelves which harbor a fine and comprehensive library, with two valuable divisions devoted to French literature and art" (Town & Country 16). Elizabeth Taylor, who resided at the Club in 1894, described the reading room, where women often gathered: 

The long center table is covered with magazines and papers. Here a homesick girl is cheering herself with Life; a studious one is reading Le Figaro; the Herald is being consulted for concert and theatre programs and the departure of mail steamers. A girl is curled up in a big rocking chair by the fire, lost to the world in the last number of ‘Trilby.’ The writing table by the window is occupied by students with home letters. Bookcases at the far end of the room hold the library, which grows steadily, if slowly by contributions from different sources. Some girls are looking over the bulletin board, which contains notices of church services, and summer sketching classes, addresses of doctors, dentists, French teachers, pensions, and announcements of the sale of student furniture (489).

Unknown, illustration of the entrance from inside the Club, ca. 1895. "Art Study in Paris"
Unknown, illustration of the entrance from inside the Club, ca. 1895. "Art Study in Paris"

The reception room and salons at 4 rue de Chevreuse were praised by many visitors. They were often filled (or overflowing) with guests during weekly teas, but also hosted art exhibits, receptions, and recitals. By the early twentieth century, a grand piano adorned the reception room: 

The new grand piano which adorns the hall was presented by subscriptions raised by Consul General ‘Jack’ Gowdy. The first time Gen. Gowdy went over to visit the club he learned there was great need of a piano. Without saying a word at the club, he began systematically to buttonhole every rich American man who came into his office for money for that purpose. Mr. Andrew Carnegie set the ball rolling with $100. And presto! the girls had a splendid grand piano almost without even knowing how it happened (Estabrook 26).

So many American students appreciated the Club's facilities, which enhanced their everyday life: "Thus, living in a beehive of ambition and work, I feel myself alive with activity, able, in fact, to ride to the finish both my hobby and my desire to become a great painter" (Rowland 758).

Not all visitors, however, were charmed with the facility, as an anonymous letter to the editor printed in the New York Herald (European Edition) on October 27, 1898 testifies:

Many are under the impression that it is a charitable organization, but such is not the case. The price of the rooms is the same as in moderately-priced pensions, and the comforts are very meagre. Nothing is done to make American girls feel at home, and most of them remain long enough to find rooms elsewhere (3).

Social Life at the Club

Drawing included in Scribner article
Minna Brown, Illustration of Afternoon Tea, 1894. Aylward, p. 603
Teapot, pewter, stamped James Dixon & Sons. Columbia Art Properties
Teapot, pewter, stamped James Dixon & Sons. Columbia Art Properties
Scribners
Minna Brown, Illustration of Early Breakfast, 1894. Aylward, p. 604

The young artists [...] mutually stimulated each other, and their parents, worried about Paris’ reputation, allowed them to come there because of this American nest. They went to anatomy classes and wandered about the neighborhood (translated from French, Desanti 317). 

Socializing was an essential aspect of life at 4 rue de Chevreuse. One of the later residents, painter Anne Goldthwaite, recalled the general atmosphere of the Club in 1909:

Under the direction of Jean Moffatt […] we paid little board and lived in the midst of luxury and romance. Nonresidents who wanted to be included in the club's social events concealed any irregularities in their lives so that they might be invited. Thanksgiving was an important occasion at the club, and American students in Paris vied for an invitation.' Goldthwaite also described how Miss Moffatt ordered everything in the grand manner, and one year chairs of crimson satin were hired for the holiday dinner. Although the director's "morals were the strictest," wrote Goldthwaite, "she disguised the fact with so much splendor of living that everybody desired an entrée to the Club, and if their lives were irregular, they tried to conceal their waywardness that they might be invited to Thanksgiving dinner'" (as quoted in Dennison 34).

The Club became the headquarters of the American Woman’s Art Association (AWAA), whose frequent exhibitions attracted large crowds of critics, artists, collectors, and aficionados from all over Paris. Several residents took turns leading the Association and many others participated in its popular exhibits, which not only paved the way for future showings of their work but also introduced them to potential buyers, dealers, and gatekeepers of the Salons. The varnishing day for each exhibition would always be accompanied by entertainment and feasting.

Tea in the Club's gardens
Photograph of tea in the garden of the Girls' Art Club. Scrapbook, RH Archives
Unknown, illustration of tea at the Club, ca 1910. "A Girl Girl's Artistic Education"
Unknown, illustration of tea at the Club, ca 1910. "A Girl Girl's Artistic Education"
Uknown, illustration of tea at the Girls' Art Club, ca. 1910. "Men's Art Clubs Fail"
Uknown, illustration of tea at the Girls' Art Club, ca. 1910. "Men's Art Clubs Fail"
Afternoon tea at the Club, 1907 (Baltimore Sun, September 8, 15)
Afternoon tea at the Club, 1907 (Baltimore Sun, September 8, 15)

Daily 5pm teas were the highlight of the Club’s social offerings. Tea was served in the garden or in the large reception room, decorated with paintings and sculptures, and known for its tasteful red furnishings, brass samovar, and piano (Breekons 38):

The high samovar is one of the prettiest parts of the picture. A pretty American girl always sits behind it; the light gleams on the shining brass and on the rich green of the quaint hot-water jugs that art students love – "because of the color, you know," – and on the deep reds and browns of the hangings on the walls; all the students of the quarter drop in, full of the chat of the ateliers, of gay American chaff, of endless art projects. The place is at once American and foreign, and it is unique in Paris (De Forest, January 13, 1900, 3).

Club residents were permitted to invite guests, even young men, on Sundays. Everyone enjoyed tea, sandwiches, cake, and camaraderie:

With the tea (either plain, with cream, or à la Russe) is served bread and butter - graham bread cut in thin slices with delicious fresh, unsalted butter, and generally cake and square sweet biscuits. One of the American girls has set a custom which, it is amusing to see, is now followed by everyone who comes to the club for tea. Taking a slice of the brown bread and butter, she forms it into a sandwich with one of the sweet biscuits. The soft bread and the dry, crumbly sweet biscuit would hardly seem to combine well, but they are really quite delicious and the combination has been named 'the Yankee sandwich.' (Good Housekeeping 412).

In the early days, tea was subsidized by "Mrs. Lukemeyer [sic], a charming American woman who lives in Paris" (Estabrook 26), but by 1902 the costs were fully covered by Elisabeth Mills Reid, for whom tea represented an important community-building activity that attracted “tout Paris” to the Club. “At five o'clock, carriages would park near the front of the door. These are the wealthy countrymen: Mrs. General Winslow, Mrs. Durkee, Miss Getty, Mrs. Porter, the current Ambassador's wife, Mrs. Gowdy, Mrs. Countess de Trobriant and many others, who come to have tea with their more modest ‘Sisters’ who live on the left bank…” (translated from French, Gil Blas 3).

The annual dance, held in December or January, was yet another highlight of the Club's social events, which attracted young Left Bank painters, sculptors, and architects.  

Another lesser-known service at the Girls' Art Club was an information bureau that helped Americans navigate everyday life in Paris. Moffat and her assistants were responsible for updating and transmitting addresses of stores, the names of reliable art teachers and their costs, lists of cultural events, travel tips and itineraries, etc. 

French lessons were offered in the evenings for a nominal fee of 1 franc. This was particularly useful since residents were required to speak French at dinner: "Each year the girls are placed at a table in the dining room with competent French teachers, and not one word of English is permitted. They usually end by speaking well before returning to their own country" (Estabrook 26).

Unfortunately, life at the Club was not always happiness and sunshine. Aside from the dreaded possibility of artistic failure or financial misfortune, the women who called 4 rue de Chevreuse home were not immune from illness and, occasionally, death. Jessie Allen, a promising young painter from San Francisco, was among the unfortunate few whose Parisian sojourn ended tragically just as she was gaining critical recognition for her work.

The Club's Leadership

Mrs. James Van Allen Shields (Roselle Lathrop), chalk drawing by Kate Edwards, student at the club. The Key, 1915, 32
Mrs. James Van Allen Shields (Roselle Lathrop), chalk drawing by Kate Edwards, student at the club. The Key, 1915, 32

Little is known about the Club's directorship in the early years. Mrs. Irvine, who served as matron from 1893 – 1894, left no archival traces. When she departed, the Club seemingly "ran itself" with oversight from Holy Trinity, but the property rapidly began showing signs of wear and tear (De Forest 1899, 3).

Julia H.C. Acly

In her 1899 review of the AWAA exhibition, Katharine De Forest reported that a certain Julia H.C. Acly had been approached on several occasions to head the Club. Acly directed St. Margaret's, the American Cathedral's boarding school for girls until 1899, when it transitioned to a day school. She then accepted the position as Director of the Girls’ Art Club. Conditions dramatically improved when Acly arrived at 4 rue de Chevreuse:

The entire house was put in a state of perfect repair and cleanliness. New floors were even laid down. In one of the rooms that was being repapered, under the cloth that covered the wall six different wall-papers were found. [...] Best of all Miss Acly took over her own cook, and the cuisine is excellent (3).

Acly’s name was not always correctly identified. For example, the Chicago Daily Tribune called her Miss Atlee (May 7, 1899, 9) while the 1905 Who's Who in Paris Anglo-American Colony lists her as Miss Ackley (129). It is unclear when Acly officially left the Club. An editorial published in The Independent in 1900 declared that, "Miss Acly is in Paris, as usual, doing her quiet service to the refinement of student life" (volume 32, p. 1815). An article in Gil Blas still listed her as the director in 1903 (February 3, 1903, 3). It is likely that she departed some time between 1905 and 1906.

Jeannette Todd Moffett

The Club’s next director was Jeannette Todd Moffett, usually identified as Jean. Originally from Jefferson County, New York, Moffett could trace her lineage back to the 18th century and was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She studied Economics at Barnard before moving to Paris and becoming involved in the 1900 Exposition Universelle. 

The old-fashioned Girls' Club of the rue de Chevreuse has always been sustained by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. Its present managress (sic!), Miss Moffatt, a charming maiden lady from New England is her sole and all-deciding representative. Whenever the garden is photographed, she sends a copy to Mrs. Reid: "Would Mrs. Reid like this? Would Mrs. Reid approve that?" (Heilig 1907, 15). 

A 1909 article, first published in the Nashville Tennessean (reprinted in the San Francisco Call on November 21), praised her work in the Club’s information bureau:

Miss Jeannette Moffit [sic] and her assistants. They can tell you anything, these skilled ladies. The addresses of stores either in Paris or at home in the States, how to find missing friends or relatives, where this teacher is located and what his prices are, who is best for this or that special course of study, information as to theaters, operas, concerts, points on how to travel from Paris to various points, what it will cost and what comforts can be expected, in short everything that could be of value to a girl far from home is within the scope of this most skilled department (A6).

"Miss Jeanette Moffett of New York, the delightful matron," is also mentioned in a 1909 Town & Country article about the Club (17). Noted artist Anne Goldthwaite, who lived at the Club between 1906 and 1912, described her as someone with the "strictest morals" who "disguised the fact with so much splendor of living that everybody desired an entrée" (unpublished memoirs, Smithsonian Archives of American Art). According to Goldthwaite, Moffat "ordered everything in the grand manner" even renting "chairs of crimson satin for a holiday dinner" (cited in Dennison 34).

Roselle Lathrop Van Allen Shields

Shields became the director of the Girls' Art Club in 1911. She was born Ella Roselle Lathrop on December 24, 1877 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her father, James Clark Lathrop, was an eminent geologist. After studying at Barnard College, she received an M.A. from Columbia University in classical languages and archaeology (1898). She went on to study archaeology in London where, in 1900, she married James Van Allen Shields, a patent lawyer managing the Columbia Phonograph Co. (The Music Trade Review 20).

Around 1903, Roselle went to Greece as the assistant to an archaeologist, where she met Scottish writer and poet William Sharp and his wife, who became lifelong friends (Halloran, Appendix 1). In 1909, she and Elizabeth Sharp, herself a writer, published a selection of William Sharp's poems in A Little Book of Nature Thoughts.

The Shields traveled extensively throughout Europe before settling in Paris. In addition to pursuing her studies in Persian, Arabic, and Chinese while managing the Girls’ Art Club (Myers 33), Roselle organized art exhibitions and lectures by eminent scholars, and she oversaw the extensive renovations to the property from 1911 – 1913. She remained at 4 rue de Chevreuse after the war  to facilitate its transformation into a hospital for the French and then the American Red Cross. Elisabeth Mills Reid considered Shields her personal representative in France and made sure she was recognized by the Red Cross as the building manager of 4 rue de Chevreuse even after it had become a military hospital.

Shields was a member of the Executive Committee of the Holy Trinity Hospital Fund, which ensured medical care for American students in Paris. Under her watch, a dispensary was established around 1913 at the Girls’ Art Club, where a nurse from the newly-founded American Hospital saw patients (Allen 482-483). It is unclear when Shields left the directorship, though her correspondence (RH Archives) clearly shows she was still on-site in 1919 and supported the proposal to establish a club for university women. She spent the last 18 years of her life in Wellesley, Massachusetts and was an active member of the League of Women Voters (Newstimes). When her sister Adele died in 1956, Shields donated two stained glass windows to St. Andrew’s Church in Wellesley: “The Lathrop Windows embody Miss Lathrop’s [Adele] scholarly interests and testify to her devotion to teaching and her devotion to Christ. She was one of the first two women elected to St. Andrew’s vestry, where she served 1924 – 1926 and 1941 – 1943. She taught at New York’s Horace Mann School, Wellesley College, and Pine Manor Junior College” (The Call 7).

The Barnard Alumnae Magazine (Winter 1967) claimed that Shields had been interned in France by the Germans during both World Wars and that she died at the age of 98 in Wellesley, Massachusetts on June 22, 1967 (20). According to Massachusetts state records, she actually died on June 15, 1966 at the age of 89. It is unclear if she was ever interned by the Germans.

The End of an Era

Countless women artists passed through the Club's doors from 1893 until 1914. Upon returning home, many pursued successful artistic careers which sometimes brought them back to France or elsewhere in Europe, where they had forged long-lasting friendships and professional ties.

In the chaos surrounding the outbreak of WWI, it appears that the Girls' Art Club, so long a haven, hastily exiled its residents as disaster loomed. On August 31, 1914, just a month into the war, the New York Tribune reported on the harrowing journey that Ethel Traphagen had endured, first in Switzerland and then in France, while trying to find temporary shelter as she arranged passage back to America on the Espagne liner. Traphagen, an art teacher at Cooper Union originally from Brooklyn, New York, had been in Lucerne when war erupted. She traveled by train to Paris, subsisting only on bread and water during the 48-hour trip. According to the Tribune, she had applied for accommodation at the Girls' Art Club, "in charge of an English woman named Shields" but was refused entry upon her arrival at the front gate. Apparently, Shields also "ordered out" the 30 American residents who were already staying at the Club but admitted a "wealthy American woman" (9). Of course, it is impossible to know exactly how all of these events transpired, or if Shields truly did evict the residents and board up the Club to all but her own friends. One only can imagine the sheer terror of those first weeks of war and the uncertainty over what would befall 4 rue de Chevreuse.

Though the tragedy of WWI made it impossible to travel to Paris, many of the artists who had resided at the Club joined the war effort, either in France or back in the United States. American artists volunteered in field hospitals and on the front lines or they raised funds for wounded soldiers and their families. Their experiences in Paris often left an indelible imprint on their lives that surpassed any artistic endeavors.

Sources

Consult the sources for the Girl's Art Club history.