Music Mysteries

In Finding Sylvie, the author Gertrude Stein is Sylvie Lewis’ neighbor in Paris. Gertrude, along with her brothers, is an early collector of paintings by the leading modernist artists.

The Stein’s salon on rue de Fleurus is filled with masterworks like Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (Femme au chapeau) (1905), Cézanne’s The Large Bathers (1900–1906), and Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905-06).  

In Finding Sylvie, Gertrude invites Sylvie to a Saturday night gathering in her salon. Here Sylvie mingles with the avant-garde painters and poets of the time.

But when Sylvie whispers that the portrait of Gertrude doesn’t look like her, Picasso overhears her. “Everybody says that she does not look like it,” he says, “but that does not make any difference. She will.” 

Gertrude immortalizes the artists in her writings: in her poem, “Cézanne,” her short story, “Matisse,” and her book, Picasso. The artists also make appearances in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. In The Autobiography, Gertrude writes of her deep friendship with Picasso. 

“I wish I could convey something of the simple affection and confidence with which he always pronounced her name and with which she always said, Pablo. In all their long friendship with all its sometimes troubled moments and its complications this has never changed.”