In silent rooms - selected interiors by Walter Gay

 

The Green Bed, Château du Bréau. (The artist's home.)

Salon, Pavillon Colombe.

The Small Red Drawing Room of the comtesse Robert de Fitz-James, Rue Constantine, Paris.

The Living Hall, the Frick Collection, circa 1928.

The Music Room and Dining Room of Eben Howard Gay's House, Boston.

The Grand Salon, Musée Jacquemart-André, circa 1912.

Edith Wharton's bedroom, Pavillon Colombe, 1926.

Interior, Château du Bréau.

The Library, Château du Bréau.

Galerie des Bustes, Chateau du Reveillon, circa 1907-09.

 The Boucher Room, the Frick Collection, 1928.

View into the Dining Room, Château du Bréau.

The United States embassy, Paris.

The Blue Room, Château du Bréau.

I would assume this painting was left unfinished.

 Elsie de Wolfe's drawing-room, 123 East Fifty-Fifth Street, New York.

The Green Lacquer Room / The Chinoiserie Room, Museo Correr, Venice, 1912/22.

The library of Mrs. Oliver Gould Jennings, 1920.

Salon, Pavillon Colombe.

Les Tableaux, Château du Bréau, circa 1918.

The Fragonard Room, the Frick Collection, 1926.

Salon, Musée Jacquemart-André, circa 1912.

Bedroom, Château du Bréau.

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Walter Gay (22 January 1856, Hingham, Massachusetts - 13 July 1937, near Fontainebleau), American painter noted both for his genre paintings of French peasants and for his depictions of luxurious interiors; he was also a notable art collector. Born into an established New England family, his painter uncle introduced him to the Boston art community. He married the wealthy New York heiress Matilda Travers, and his wife's fortune allowed the couple to live very comfortably; in 1876, when the artist was only twenty, the pair moved to France. They divided their time between their country homes and their Paris apartment. And in 1907, they purchased the Château du Bréau on a 300-acre walled park near the Forest of Fontainebleau. On his arrival in France he became a pupil of Léon Bonnat - a fellow student was John Singer Sargent, who became a close friend - and he traveled to Spain, where he studied the work of Velázquez and Mariano Fortuny, both proving important influences on his own work. He received an honorable mention in the Paris Salon of 1885 and a gold medal three years later. He collected similar awards in Vienna, Antwerp, Berlin, and Munich in the following years, and was one of the artists selected to represent the United States at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. His first works were still-lifes, the depictions of eighteenth-century French peasant life, later shifting to genre scenes with realistic depictions of peasants and factory workers. But around 1895, he abandoned these themes and began portraying luxurious domestic interiors, glamorous figure-less rooms in French chateaux and elegant private homes. He was created a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1894, officier of the order in 1906, and commandeur in 1927. He also took on many American artists as students, to the extent that the New York Times dubbed him the "Dean of American Artists in Paris." He died at the age of eighty-one, after which his widow donated a portion of his art collection, some two hundred important works, to the Louvre. Matilda Travers Gay, having remained at their home in France, which was subsequently taken over by German officers during the Occupation, died there in 1943, a prisoner in her own home.

The Artist's Study, rue de l'Université , circa 1910.

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The Château du Bréau, the artist's home and subject of so many of his paintings. After its collapse, it was demolished in 1971.

A color like the sunset or the dawn - silk taffeta evening gown, unknown maker, circa 1846

 

Ladies, please...! - publicity portraits for "The Women" by László Willinger, 1939

 

There were relatively few problems during the making of this now iconic film. Perhaps surprising, considering the long-term tensions between two of the three "above the title" stars. In their glory days at MGM - from which both were now rapidly receding - Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford had competed for who would be acknowledged the studio's greatest female star. (Besides Garbo; Garbo's lofty position was ever untouchable. But, then, only a handful of years later, between 1941 and 1943, all three would leave MGM.) Shearer was "married to the boss," Irving Thalberg, which Crawford had always thought made for an unfair fight. But Thalberg had died three years before, leveling the playing field. This was their first - and only - time as co-stars. (Though, ironically, in Crawford's very first appearance on film, 1925's "Lady of the Night," she was used as a double for the film's star, Shearer.) 

Rosalind Russell had fought hard to get her name above the title. (The studio's concession to Shearer and Crawford was that Russell's name was in a slightly smaller font.) After having languished for five years in usually rather dreary supporting or second-lead roles, her performance as Sylvia Fowler made Russell a full-fledged star and, also thanks to the success of her very next film, "His Girl Friday," her career was reinvented, establishing her as a brilliant comedienne.

Director George Cukor and all involved in the production took great pains to avoid any appearance of favoritism concerning any one the three leads. For example, when any combination of the trio was needed on-set, they were always called precisely at the same time. But filming didn't proceed entirely without incident. And there is one frequently repeated story about the day when the two actresses were filming their big dressing room confrontation scene. As Gavin Lambert writes in his 1990 biography of the actress, "Norma Shearer", "[Cukor] filmed the master shot, then lined up a close-up of Norma. While he rehearsed her, Joan, who still brought her knitting to the set, clacked away at an afghan with her large, heavy needles. Then Cukor asked her to stand behind the camera during the take and speak her lines off-screen to Norma. She did so, trailing her afghan, and as Cukor held the shot for Norma's silent reaction, the needles clacked away again. Norma lost her concentration, looked up sharply, and asked Joan to stop needling during the retake. Joan pretended not to hear, repeated the treatment, and this time Norma broke off in mid-reaction. Her voice as steely as the needles, she asked Cukor to send Miss Crawford home and read the lines himself." Cukor asked Crawford to apologize but she refused, walking off the set. Apparently, though, she did later send Shearer an apologetic telegram.

The other frequently recounted incident relates to these images. The story goes that Shearer, Crawford, and Russell were scheduled to arrive for their appointment with photographer Willinger in order to shoot publicity portraits for the film. But when the time of the appointment came - and passed - both Shearer and Crawford could clearly be seen in their cars, as their drivers took long circles around the lot, waiting for the other to arrive first; in this little game of top-dog diva, the last one to arrive would be the winner. It was said that, finally, director Cukor, annoyed at their ridiculous behavior, had to go out and wave them both in so that the portrait session could proceed.