From 1903 through to 1914 American siblings Leo and Gertrude Stein shared an apartment at 27, rue de Fleurus on the Left Bank, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

A four room, two-storey apartment with an atelier attached ‘27’ was located near the Luxembourg Gardens; a not so fashionable neighbourhood at the time yet one that was popular with artists because of the cheap rents.

The square shaped drawing room with its high ceilings and whitewashed walls was filled with large, carved, dark oak, Renaissance furniture that Leo had picked up in Florence, during one of his ‘junking trips’ to Italy. His Japanese prints were on the walls and Islamic carpets on the floor. In a matter of months the prints gave way to a burgeoning collection of artworks.

It was 1904 when the Stein siblings saw their first Cezanne and started buying. Soon the walls at 27 were filled with works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Manet, Renoir as well as Vallotton and Bonnard, all unframed. It was a space that was never intended to be a gallery but inadvertently became one of the world’s first museums of modern art.

The first documented visitors to rue de Fleurus were artist friends Leo Stein had met while taking classes at the Academie Julian or playing billiards at the Café du Dome. In August 1905 Alfred Maurer and Mahonri Young brought some fellow Americans to see and ‘be shocked’ by the Stein’s picture collection. With the acquisition of Matisse’s Woman with a Hat in, 1905, which had just been exhibited at the Salon d’ Automne a few weeks earlier and drawn much infamy in the press for its shockingness, the Steins public profile as avant-garde collectors was cemented. Around 1905-1906, Leo had arrived at an understanding of modern art that few possessed and sometime in 1906 Leo and Gertrude decided to start hosting regular Saturday evening salons to accommodate the steady flow of visitors.

Reactions to the paintings by Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso ranged from disdain to incredulity and astonishment, which served only to spread the word more.

At 58 rue Madame, the home of Leo and Gertrude’s older brother Michael and his wife Sarah–who also were early collectors of Modern art, especially Matisse–opened its doors too, on Saturdays for ‘at home’ viewings of their collection. The Saturday evening gatherings at rue de Fleurus would start at 9 o’clock and go until the early hours. 28 rue Madame opened earlier so visitors could see both collections. Both Stein households usually hosted a small group for dinner prior to literally opening their doors the public.

Until around 1909 Leo led the way in aesthetics, using Saturday evenings to explain the works, giving them context in relation to art history and emerging ideas of the time. With time more and more visitors came to see the people as much as the paintings.

The two Stein salons were by no means unique, for Paris was a city of salons that included; the aristocratic salons of the Fabourg Saint-Germain, Wilhelm Uhde—a rue de Fleurus regular—hosted his own gatherings every Sunday and there was the American Club in Montparnasse as well as the Café du Dome and Closereie des Lilas where many of the artists and writers who attended the Steins salons, also gathered.

The cosmopolitanism and outsider status of the Stein family worked in their favour. Disdained by genteel French society the Stein ‘at homes’ became meeting places for artists and writers of different nationalities and backgrounds. It was a crowd that would develop Futurism, Orphism, Vorticism, Dadaism and the other modern isms. Avant-garde artists were nurtured and economically sustained, reputations enhanced by in-house competition and careers furthered by introductions to soon-to-be-collectors and impresarios. When Picasso entered the Stein circle, he brought his writer and artist friends with him, widening and changing it. Picasso’s friend the poet Guillaume Apollinaire became quite the star at number 27, and a sort of master of ceremonies.

The personalities as well as the pictures inspired new works of art and literature and the dealer Ambroise Vollard regarded Leo Stein as a valuable patron and spokesperson for art that initially had no social or financial currency.

Around 1910-1911 the atmosphere at rue de Fleurus began to shift. The original salons had relied heavily on Leo’s expositions and explanations on modernist aesthetics to draw the crowds. By 1912 Gertrude was leading the way; promoting her writing and Picasso’s Cubism. Leo definitively left 27 rue de Fleurus in 1914 and the shared art collection was divided between them.

During the years between World War I and World War II, a steady stream of expatriate American and English writers, whom Stein dubbed “the Lost Generation,” found their way to her Saturday salons. Now it was not just the art but also Gertrude’s fame as a literary, American expat and her radical, uncompromising writing style that brought the genuinely interested and curious to the door of rue de Fleurus. The famous names were often American writers such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and Thornton Wilder.