India Knight, who is basically my guru, sorting my reading list, advising upon the tricky issue of the right PINK paint, parasols and delicious food, wrote on Sunday about the wonderful Vuillard and Les Nabis. I hope the link below works:
And, of course, I wanted to live in that painting there and then, particularly as I had, the evening before, been in a very beautiful old, old, old apartment (over a shop) which was painted purest white. I loved it, but my natural inclination is towards layers and layers of pattern and colour. So Les Nabis are my sort of people (although I do wonder whether life might have been a little fraught for the non-artistic me. It is all very well, but it is a bit testing to find that the very vegetables you intend to have for supper are actually a still life and must not, on any account, be moved from the very table you are about to lay up for said supper …. and if you do, absent mindedly, begin to stone apricots for a flan … genius is disrupted and it is all your fault). I know this.
A great grandfather had a studio in Pont Aven and painted there - a little before Les Nabis really got their act together. I’ve been to Pont Aven and it is charming. And here is a picture of him in his studio, in full on artist mode - there is a hubble bubble just out of shot, and I absolutely feel he was experimenting with an early hippy/alternative lifestyle and having a lovely time in a garret (he doesn’t look particularly hungry or in the grip of existential angst, I must say - I rather think he was probably quite chirped) . In later photos he is full on Edwardian Gent. In Antibes, so perhaps not entirely tamed.
It is not a brilliant photo, but you will get an idea:
And see the little Levantine stool on the right? Here it is in my sitting room:
Rather battered by the passage of time, but still, here it is.
And, thrillingly, I think I’ve worked out how to post a photograph on Substack. I had to have a soothing bath with a cap full of Olverum bath oil to restore shattered nerves - now all I have to do is remember how I did it. But what I haven’t worked out how to do is create a link for you to go directly to Olverum delight. I will work that out, but now I must hop onto a terrifying bus and go to work.
The BUS. I use the bus, even though I’m sure my blood pressure goes up dramatically, because parking is a bore, and I have a bus pass and feel I should use it. Anyway, the bus drivers appear to be determined to break the land speed record and we bucket round bends and through floods (there is still a very damp area at the TOP of a hill - I’m working on the geography of this mystery) at a terrifying rate of knots and everyone clings onto the seat in front of them and prays.
We all politely say “thank you” to manic drivers as we stagger onto firm ground taking deep breaths and rolling eyes at each other. “Got here, then!” says one old man. Bus zooms off as we pull ourselves together and resume normality. Sometimes I really cannot face it and then I drive, being careful to avoid any possibility of being bus adjacent, if you get my drift.
Now for some makeup and the bus. Off I go. Tomorrow I shall be at home and Zooming about wallpaper and that will be lovely.
That is fascinating. I love the look of him - as you say, early adopter.
This was lovely. (And well do I remember the really rather stressful experiments with posting images - wish I'd considered your solution of an Olverum bath...