86TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432.102a,letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 2 March 1953.
87Adam, Peter, Eileen Gray: Her Life and Work, London, Thames and Hudson, 2009, p.25.
88TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-109, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 21 November 1951. Ladbroke Black (1877-1940), a journalist, who was on a brief trip to Paris in autumn 1899. Haweis had introduced him to Henry and Black had been at Cambridge with Crowley, Kelly and Haweis. TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-109, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 4 March 1952.
89TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-109, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 15 June 1952.
90Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 20 November 1967.
91Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 12 February 1968.
92TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-109, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 19 June 1952.
93TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-109, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 21 November 1951.
94TCD Archives, Paul Henry Papers – 7432/71-10, letter from Stephen Haweis to Paul Henry, 23 December 1952.
95Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 30 March 1962, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, Monday 17 December possibly 1962, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 14 February 1963, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 17 October 1965, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 1 November 1966, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 8 August 1968.
96Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 1 catalogued correspondence, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 17 December year unknown, and letter dated 30 March 1962.
97Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 1 catalogued correspondence, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, Sunday 1 November year unknown.
3
The Artist: Painting, Sculpture, Photography
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Paris was the artistic centre of the avant-garde. Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism,the Russian avant-garde, De Stijl and Surrealism coupled with a rejection of academic tradition made artists and designers question traditional picture-making and sculpture techniques through other media. Gray’s art student years at the Slade, the École Colarossi and then at the Académie Julien were pivotal to so many aspects of her future work – especially her lacquer work and her carpet designs. Both mediums continued to demonstrate her painterly skills. It was during these formative years that Gray met many of her artistic circles; artists, writers, sculptors, photographers, theorists and philosophers, who would have such a profound influence on her developing ideas.
3.1 Drawing of a nude study, 1903, paper, pencil, charcoal © NMI
Gray regrettably destroyed most of her artwork during her student period, with the exception of a very competent figurative study which dates approximately to 1903. This sketch shows the muscles, ligaments, a rib cage, body organs and a right-side profile of a woman.1 Her talent as an artist was apparent after she had a painting, Derniers Rayons de soleil d’une Belle Journée, received at the 120 Salon des Artistes Français au Grand Palais.2 Gray took her apartment on the rue Bonaparte in 1907 and by 1908 was already working directly in lacquer.3 From this moment Gray began to follow, and acquire into her library, the manifestoes from many major art movements. Gray’s library had numerous books on art history, painters, sculptors, architecture and their theories. Many were written by fellow artists or acquaintances whom she knew and many were signed by the original authors.
Gray also owned a number of art books which pre-date her formal art training in both London and Paris. Three particular texts were of importance; The Renaissance, 1873 by Walter Pater, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 1890 by James Abbott NcNeill Whistler and The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley, 1899 by John Lane. These three publications along with the writings of Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), in whom Gray also had a profound interest, reveal Gray’s interest in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements. These movements were also linked with the Symbolist movement in France which had its beginnings with Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-1867) poem Les Fleurs du Mal, 1857 (Gray later used the title of Baudelaire’s poem Invitation au Voyage as a coded symbol and decorative feature on the wall of the living in the house E.1027 in 1929). The Symbolist movement’s ideas were anticipated in the work of the idealising neo-classicist Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), in whose work Gray also expressed an interest. The influence of the ideas expressed in these publications is revealed in Gray’s artistic development; especially in her figurative artwork, her use of symbolism and her ideas on decorative art. They are significant not only in her early artistic career but also in her later career as a designer and architect.
The Aesthetic movement in England was influenced by the writings of the Oxford professor Walter Pater (1839-1894) and his essays, which he published in 1867-68, culminated in the book Studies in the History of the Renaissance in 1873 and later renamed in the second and later editions The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.4 In this controversial book Pater maintained that our thoughts and lives were in constant flux and for this reason he emphasised that people should get the most out of life through sharp and eager observation. It was more as a designer and architect than as a painter that Gray adapted Pater’s ideas to suit her own requirements. She acutely observed the way that people interacted with her furniture and her architectural interiors, adapting her designs as such.
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) were two of the key artists associated with the Aesthetic movement. They became the main leaders of the movement along with Oscar Wilde. Rejecting John Ruskin’s (1819-1900) idea of art as something useful or moral they advocated that art did not have a didactic role – rather they emphasised its aesthetic