crowded with students, the walls thick with palette scrapings, hot airless and extremely noisy’.63 Henry also describes life at the Académie. ‘The studios of the Julian group were crowded and overflowing, and teachers and masters of all kinds were available’.64 Women were provided with the services of a ‘bonne’ or assistant who ran errands for them. As in the men’s studios the work was almost entirely technical, with long sessions of life classes. By 1885 there was a course of lectures on anatomy and perspective and dissections of dead bodies were performed in the students’ presence. Fees were double for women, possibly because of the extra expense of providing segregated studios. The first women’s atelier was located on the second floor at 27 Galerie Montmartre in the Passage des Panoramas. It was ‘located near one of the principal boulevards and approached by a flight of steps leading up to the first landing. A small door opened into a moderate sized room with a skylight, a stove in the centre, an evident lack of ventilation and a platform on which sat a draped model’.65 As the number of students increased, a second studio for women was opened in the nearby rue Vivienne, but this later closed. The main studio for men moved to the rue du Faubourg St Denis. Eventually the Passage des Panoramas became the site of Jean-Paul Laurens’s (1838-1921) studio, the site of popular women’s classes which continued until the beginning of the First World War. Haweis describes Laurens. ‘He was very kind to me, but he could be quite the reverse at times. He was a big man, not unlike a highly civilised gorilla, and it was the custom of the class to follow him around from easel to easel, listening to all the criticisms he made upon the different studies’. In 1888 another women’s studio was added at 28 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and a more permanent atelier soon opened at 5 rue de Berri, just off the Champs Élysées, with 400 square metres of space. In addition to classes for drawing and painting, there were sculpture, watercolour and miniature painting classes. William Bouguereau (1825-1905) taught there. Henri Chapu (1833-1891), followed by Raoul Verlet (1857-1923) and Paul Landowski (1875-1961) taught sculpture. About 1890 two more women’s studios opened, one at 28 rue Fontaine and the other adjacent to the men’s atelier at 5 rue Fromentin. Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911) and Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1912) took charge of these studios. In that year the main studio for men was transferred to 31 rue du Dragon. A further women’s atelier opened at 55 rue du Cherche-Midi nearby and occupied the entire building. This is possibly where Gray studied.
2.15 Jean-Paul Laurens in his studio, 1912, black and white photograph © Roger Viollet /Topfoto
Other popular ateliers for women were those run by well-known painters such as Carolus-Duran (1837-1917) and Édouard Krug (1829-1901). Women often studied at several of these academies simultaneously, or progressed from one to another, or entered one to continue later at another. Paul Henry offers an explanation as to why students, such as Gray, moved on from the Académie Julian saying ‘a prolonged course of making accurate drawings from the nude model had taught me that however earnest and painstaking I might be, I might go on for years just doing this one thing and I had seen enough of the results of such teaching in the schools to realise it was a blind alley’.66
2.16 Frances Hodgkins, November 1912, black and white photograph © Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand
Haweis in his memoirs said that he did not remain long at the Académie as he decided to study at other studios in the Montparnasse quarter. He studied at the Académie Julian in 1899-1900. Henry and Haweis later enrolled in a new art school, the Académie Whistler, better known as the Académie Carmen, where they became inseparable. The two friends, along with Scottish artist Francis Cadell explored Paris, meeting frequently for walks around the city and immersing themselves in its artistic and cultural life. He then went on to study in other studios under the famous Czech artist and illustrator Alphonse Mucha and Eugène Carrière (1849-1906). Haweis is recorded as attending evening classes at the École Colarossi in 1902. After becoming interested in photography, he met Auguste Rodin and subsequently photographed many of the sculptor’s pieces.
Attending several studios enabled students to compare what each offered and choose what they wished from each. During her early years in France, Gray apparently took summer classes in Caudebec-en-Caux, Normandy under the guidance of Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947).67 Hodgkins became the first female teacher employed at the École Colarossi in 1910. Regrettably, Gray destroyed her artwork from this student period. Only a very competent figurative study remains.68 That Gray became an accomplished artist during these formative years at the Académie Julian is proved by the fact that she had a painting accepted at the Salon. Writing to Haweis on 17 October 1965 she says; ‘I was pleased to get a painting received at the Salon, chiefly because it reduced the family opposition to my staying in Paris’.69
2.17 Old Woman, Caudebec, by Frances Hodgkins, 1901, watercolour and gouache © Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery
After completing their art studies both Gray and Haweis’s lives went in separate directions. Gray settled permanently in Paris, taking her apartment in the rue Bonaparte by 1906, and she continued the studies in lacquer which she began in London. Haweis, now married, began working for Rodin. Gray’s circle expanded, primarily through her flowering profession as a designer of lacquer furniture and with developing friendships and acquaintances with many from the Left Bank cognoscenti. Stephen Haweis maintained contact with many of their circle throughout his life, including Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), Augustus John (1878-1961), Romaine Brooks, Gerald Kelly, John Lavery, Katherine Constance Lloyd (op. 1923-1940) and William Somerset Maugham. But by 1950 he wrote to Eileen Gray that he heard ‘very little from anybody of Paris from their early days’.70 However, through their letters they discuss what happened to the people in their milieu.
2.18 Gertrude Stein with her brothers, Paris, 1906, black and white photograph © The Granger Collection/ Topfoto
Out of their Parisian circle of 1902-3 Gray remained close with Jessie Gavin. Gavin was born in 1876 to Crichton Strachan Gavin and Ann Sophia Lord. In 1915 she married René Raoul Duval, a wealthy restaurateur, and subsequently changed her name to Jacqueline (Jackie). After Haweis married Loy, Gray and the Duvals went on holiday for four weeks to Tunisia. In 1905 Gray also travelled to Algiers with the Duvals, where she caught typhoid and nearly died. She convalesced in the south of France in Hyères. In her letters Gray writes how she was so very fond of Gavin. A distance had occurred for a time between them due to the influence of two other friends, Yolande de Gail and Olive Pixley who was also friends with Gray’s sister Thora.71 Gavin died in 1939. Gray wrote to Haweis saying; ‘One by one all those friends have gone and even others who came after, but I still miss Gavin’.72
Kathleen Bruce changed her name to Scott on her first marriage, and later became Baroness Kennet, subsequently enjoying a career as a renowned British sculptor. Bruce had befriended Gray and Gavin at the Slade and had lived with Jessie Gavin when they first arrived in Paris. Bruce remained at the Colarossi
