| ||||||||||
|
Jules Pascin was born in Vidin, Bulgaria to a Spanish-Sephardic Jewish father and a Serbian-Italian mother. His
early artistic training was in Vienna and Munich. He adopted the pseudonym Pascin (an anagram of Pincas)
early in 1905,[1] at about
the same time that he began contributing drawings to Simplicissimus, a
satirical magazine published in Munich. In December, 1905 he arrived in Paris, becoming part of the great
migration of artistic creativity to that city at the start of the 20th century.
In 1907 Pascin met Hermine Lionette Cartan David, also a painter, and they became lovers, living together until Pascin left
for America on October 3, 1914. Hermine David stayed in Paris with her mother
until, at Pascin's request, she too sailed to America on October 31, 1914. Pascin lived in the United States from 1914 to 1920, sitting out World War I, and while
there he taught at the Telfair Academy[2][3] in Savannah, Georgia. He and
Hermine painted in New York City as well as
in Miami, New Orleans and Cuba. Pascin married Hermine David
at city hall in New York City. The witnesses were Max Weber and Maurice Sterne, both painters living in New York and friends of
Pascin. Pascin was granted American citizenship, but in France he became the
symbol of the Montparnasse artistic
community. Always in his bowler hat, he was a witty presence at Le Dôme café,
Le Jockey club, and the other haunts of the areaâs bohemian society.
Pascin made visits to Bulgaria in 1923/1924 and at an uncertain later date. Despite the constant partying, Pascin created thousands of watercolors and
sketches, plus drawings and caricatures that he sold to various newspapers and
magazines. He studied the art of drawing at the Académie Colarossi and, like Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec before him, he drew upon his
surroundings and his friends, both male and female, as subjects. He wanted to
become a serious painter but in time he became deeply depressed over his
inability to achieve critical success with his efforts. During the 1920s, Pascin mostly painted fragile petites filles,
prostitutes waiting for clients, or models waiting for the sitting to end. His
fleetingly rendered paintings sold readily, but the money he made was quickly
spent. Famous as the host of numerous large and raucous parties in his flat,
whenever he was invited elsewhere for dinner he arrived with as many bottles of
wine as he could carry. He frequently led a large group of friends on summer
picnics beside the River Marne, their
excursions lasting all afternoon. According to his biographer, Georges
Charensol, "Scarcely had he chosen his table at the Dôme or the Sélect
than he would be surrounded by five or six friends; at nine o'clock, when we
got up to dinner, we would be 20 in all, and later in the evening, when we
decided to go up to Montmartre to
Charlotte Gardelle's or the Princess Marfa'sâwhere Pascin loved to take the
place of the drummer in the jazz bandâhe had to provide for 10 taxis."[citation
needed] In his collection of memoirs, A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway wrote a
chapter titled With Pascin At the Dôme, recounting a night in 1923 when
he had stopped off at Le Dôme and met Pascin escorted by two models.
Hemingway's depiction of the events of that night are considered one of the
defining images of Montparnasse at the time. Behind Pascinâs panache lurked the terror of a tortured mind. Suffering
from depression and alcoholism, "driven to the wall by his own
legend", according to art critic Gaston Diehl, he committed suicide on the
eve of a prestigious solo show by slitting his wrists and hanging himself in
his studio in Montmartre. On the wall he left a message written in his own
blood that said good-bye to his lost love, Cecile (Lucy) Vidil Krohg.[4] In his last
will and testament Pascin left his estate equally to his mistress, Lucy Krohg,
and to his wife, Hermine David.[5] On the day of Pascinâs funeral, June 7, 1930, all the galleries in Paris
closed. Thousands of acquaintances from the artistic community along with
dozens of waiters and bartenders from the restaurants and saloons he had
frequented, all dressed in black, walked behind his coffin the three miles from
his studio at 36 boulevard de Clichy to the Cimetière de
Saint-Ouen. A year later, Pascin, who
was buried under his real name of Pincas was moved to the more prestigious Cimetière de
Montparnasse. |