<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

Exactly how much fun was it being an impoverished artist in Paris?

A review of In Montmatre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900 – 1910, by Sue Roe. This rollicking read is at its best when describing the bacchanalian squalor

30 August 2014

9:00 AM

30 August 2014

9:00 AM

In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900–1910 Sue Roe

Penguin/Fig Tree, pp.365, £20, ISBN: 9781905490868

What he really wanted, Picasso once remarked, was to live ‘like a pauper, but with plenty of money’. It sounds most appealing: the perfect recipe for a bohemian life, dreamed up by a supreme master in the art of having it both ways. To begin with at least, however, Picasso had to make do only with the half of his formula: living like a pauper with scarcely any cash at all.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Subscribe for just $2 a week

Try a month of The Spectator Australia absolutely free and without commitment. Not only that but – if you choose to continue – you’ll pay just $2 a week for your first year.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £16. Tel: 08430 600033. Martin Gayford’s The Yellow House explored nine weeks in the life of Van Gogh and Gauguin sharing a house in Arles in 1888.

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close