The lecture by Anne Catherine Abecassis focuses on the seven most iconic Paris-American women of the Belle Epoque.

They were rich, artistic, and philanthropic. They painted, danced, wrote, played music, held salons, and loved. They brought a great whiff of freedom to the, often, staid conventions of Belle Epoque Paris at the same time as they escaped the social constraints of their own country. Their impact on the artistic and cultural life of the capital of modern art was considerable thanks to their energy, their talent... and their financial resources!

They are the pioneers of modern dance, Loïe Fuller (Mary Louise Fuller) and Isadora Duncan, the painters Romaine Brooks and Anna Klumpke, the musical patron Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac, the literary hostess Natalie Clifford Barney, known for her poetry, memoirs, and epigrams and who is one of the last great Parisian salonnières. The famous art collection at the studio of Gertrude Stein also contributed to the birth of Modernism in Paris in the years before the First World War.

Every month, on the third Saturday, Christophe and Anne Catherine take turn and host a conference, followed by a short Q&A session.

The online lecture is available on replay at the link below:

Credit: Frances Benjamin Johnston, Portrait of Natalie Clifford Barney, entre 1890 et 1910. Washington DC, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.