The (, "Washhouse Boat") is the nickname of a building in the
Montmartre
Montmartre ( , , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement of Paris, 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Rive Droite, Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for its a ...
district of the
18th arrondissement of Paris
The 18th arrondissement of Paris (''XVIIIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 Arrondissements of Paris, arrondissements, or administrative districts, of Paris, the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as '' ...
that is famous in art history as the residence and meeting place for a group of outstanding early 20th-century artists such as
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
, men of letters, theatre people, and art dealers. It is located at No. 13 Rue Ravignan at Place Emile Goudeau, just below the
Place du Tertre
The Place du Tertre () is a square in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France. Only a few streets away from the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and the Lapin Agile cabaret, it is near the summit of the city's elevated Montmartre quarter.
Histo ...
.
A fire destroyed most of the building in May 1970 and only the façade remained, but it was completely rebuilt in 1978.
History
Formerly a ballroom and piano factory, Bateau Lavoir was
squatted
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there wer ...
and divided into 20 small workshops in 1889. Distributed along a corridor were small unheated rooms that shared a single source of water.
The name "" was coined by French poet
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic c ...
. The building was dark and dirty, almost seeming to be a scrap pile rather than a dwelling. On stormy days, it swayed and creaked, reminding people of washing-boats on the
Seine River
The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres p ...
, hence the name.
The building stands on a small cobblestone square that was known as Place Ravignan. In 1911, it was rechristened Place Émile Goudeau for
Émile Goudeau
Émile Goudeau (; 29 August 1849 – 18 September 1906) was a French journalist, novelist and poet. He was the founder of the Hydropathes literary club.
Life
He was born in Périgueux, Dordogne, the son of Germain Goudeau, an architect, and ...
(1849–1906), a popular novelist, poet, and journalist who founded
Les Hydropathes
LES or Les may refer to:
People
* Les (given name)
* Les (surname)
* L.E.S. (producer), hip hop producer
Space flight
* Launch Entry Suit, worn by Space Shuttle crews
* Launch escape system, for spacecraft emergencies
* Lincoln Experimental ...
, a renowned and famous literary club. The square now has a
Wallace fountain and is planted with
horse chestnut
The genus ''Aesculus'' ( or ), with notable species including buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with ...
trees.
Maxime Maufra
Maxime Maufra (17 May 1861 – 23 May 1918) was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer.
Life
Maufra first began painting at 18. He was encouraged to do so by two artists from Nantes such as the brothers Charles Ledu ...
(1863–1918) was the first noted artist to take up residence in Bateau-Lavoir, around 1890.
Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a ...
and
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
took up residence between 1900 and 1904. After 1904 more artists and writers moved in, including
Otto van Rees,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...
,
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan (born Pierre Dumarchey; February 26, 1882 – June 27, 1970), was a French novelist and songwriter.
His novel ''Quai des Brumes'' was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starri ...
,
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic g ...
,
André Salmon
André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.
Biography
André Salmon was born i ...
,
Pablo Gargallo
Pablo Emilio or Pau Emili Gargallo (5 January 1881 – 28 December 1934), known simply as Pau or Pablo Gargallo, was a Spanish sculptor and painter.
Life and career
Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, with his family in 1888, wher ...
,
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic c ...
,
Luigi Corbellini, and
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual app ...
.
It became an unofficial club that included artists
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...
,
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( ; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with ...
,
André Derain
André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
In 2025, all of Derain’s work entered the public domain in the United States.
Life and career
Early ...
,
Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French painter associated with the Fauvist movement. He gained recognition for his vibrant and decorative style, which became popular in various forms, such as textile designs, and public build ...
,
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or.
Biography
Laurencin was born in Par ...
,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...
,
Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens (; 28 March 1838 – 23 March 1921) was a romanticism French painter and sculptor, and he is one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.
Biography
Laurens was born in Fourquevaux and was a pupil of Léon ...
,
Maurice Utrillo
Maurice Utrillo (; born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955) was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. From the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of ...
,
Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Lithuanian-born French-American Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, domi ...
,
MarÃa Blanchard
MarÃa Gutiérrez-Cueto y Blanchard
spanish-art.org; accessed 4 August 2015.
,
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
and
Louis Marcoussis
Louis Marcoussis (born Ludwik Kazimierz Wladyslaw Markus or Ludwig Casimir Ladislas Markus; 1878 or 1883 – October 22, 1941) was a Polish-French avant-garde painter active primarily in Paris. Markus studied law in Warsaw before attending the Kr ...
; writers
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
,
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (; ; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French Artistic symbol, symbolist writer who is best known for his play ''Ubu Roi'' (1896)'','' often cited as a forerunner of the Dada, Surrealism, Surrealist, and Futurism, Futurist ...
,
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
,
Gustave Coquiot
Gustave Coquiot (24 September 1865 – 6 June 1926) was a French art critic and writer. A collector of paintings by Maurice Utrillo, he also was one of Auguste Rodin's secretaries.
Theatre
* 1904: ''Deux heures du matin, quartier Marbeuf'', ...
, Cremnitz (Maurice Chevrier),
Paul Fort
Jules-Jean-Paul Fort (1 February 1872 – 20 April 1960) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d'Art (1890–93). He also founded and edi ...
, André Warnod,
Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet (; 18 June 1903 – 12 December 1923) was a French novelist and poet whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone.
Early life
Radiguet was born in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Saint-Maur, Val-de-M ...
, and
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
; actors
Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin (; 8 May 1885 – 11 December 1949) was a French actor, theater manager and director.
Career
Dullin began his career as an actor in melodrama:185 In 1908, he started his first troupe with Saturnin Fabre, the ''Théâtre de Foire, ...
,
Harry Baur
Harry Baur (12 April 1880 – 8 April 1943) was a French actor, famous for his titular role in ''Beethoven's Great Love'' and as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1934 film), the 1934 version of ''Les Misérables''.
Life
Initially a stage actor ...
, and
Gaston Modot
Gaston Modot (31 December 1887 – 20 February 1970) was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of great French directors.
Biography
Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th cen ...
; and art dealers
Ambroise Vollard
Ambroise Vollard (; 3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) was a French art dealer who is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with
being a major supporter an ...
,
Clovis Sagot,
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (25 June 1884 – 11 January 1979) was a German-born art collector, and one of the most notable French art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and was among ...
, and
Berthe Weill
Berthe Weill (Paris 1865 – 1951) was a French art dealer who played a vital role in the creation of the market for twentieth-century art with the manifestation of the Parisian Avant-Garde. Although she is much less known than her well-establi ...
.
While residing at the Bateau-Lavoir, Picasso painted works such as ''
Young Girl with a Flower Basket
''Young Girl with a Flower Basket'' (French: ''Fillette à la corbeille fleurie'' or ''Jeune fille nue avec panier de fleurs'' or ''Fillette nue au panier de fleurs'' or ''Le panier fleuri'') is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso fro ...
'', and ''
Garçon à la pipe
''Garçon à la Pipe'' (English: ''Boy with a Pipe'') is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1905 when Picasso was 24 years old, during his Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre area of Paris. The painting ...
'' (''Boy with a Pipe'') in 1905, and one of his most noted works, ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(''The Young Ladies of Avignon'', originally titled ''The Brothel of Avignon'') is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it portrays f ...
'' in 1907, considered by art historians as a
proto-Cubist painting (the precursor of a movement that became known as
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture.
Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...
).
Following the outbreak of
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
in 1914, creative artists living at the Bateau-Lavoir and in the neighbourhood began moving elsewhere, mainly to
Montparnasse
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split betwee ...
.
Notable residents
*
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
*
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( ; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with ...
*
Jose De Creeft
*
Luigi Corbellini
*
Tibor Csernus
*
Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a ...
*
Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich (10 July 1878 – 9 March 1943) was a German painter and sculptor of Jewish origin. A part of the first generation of abstract painters in Western art, Freundlich was a great admirer of cubism. He was murdered at Majdanek con ...
*
Pablo Gargallo
Pablo Emilio or Pau Emili Gargallo (5 January 1881 – 28 December 1934), known simply as Pau or Pablo Gargallo, was a Spanish sculptor and painter.
Life and career
Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, with his family in 1888, wher ...
*
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic g ...
*
Auguste Herbin
Auguste Herbin (29 April 1882 – 31 January 1960) was a French Painting, painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubism, Cubist and abstract art, abstract paintings consisting of colorful Geometry, geometric figures. He co-founded the gr ...
*
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic c ...
*
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or.
Biography
Laurencin was born in Par ...
*
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan (born Pierre Dumarchey; February 26, 1882 – June 27, 1970), was a French novelist and songwriter.
His novel ''Quai des Brumes'' was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starri ...
*
Maxime Maufra
Maxime Maufra (17 May 1861 – 23 May 1918) was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer.
Life
Maufra first began painting at 18. He was encouraged to do so by two artists from Nantes such as the brothers Charles Ledu ...
*
Ksenia Milicevic
Ksenia Milicevic (born September 15, 1942) is a French painter, architect and town planner. She is based in Paris, with a studio in Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre and also maintains a base in South West France.
Life
Ksenia Milicevic was born in ...
*
Igor Mitoraj
Igor Mitoraj (Polish pronunciation: ; 26 March 1944 – 6 October 2014), born Jerzy Makina, was a Polish artist and monumental sculptor. Known for his fragmented sculptures of the human body often created as large-scale installations in public p ...
*
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...
*
Fernande Olivier
Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...
*
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno MarÃa de los Remedios Cipriano de la SantÃsima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
*
Augusta Preitinger
*
Adya van Rees-Dutilh
Adrienne (Adya) van Rees-Dutilh (7 June 1876 – 11 August 1959) was a Dutch textile artist, painter and graphic artist. She was part of the Dada movement in Zürich and was one of the early signatories of the first Berlin Dada manifesto.
Biogra ...
*
Otto van Rees
*
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual app ...
*
Endre Rozsda
Endre Rozsda (; 18 November 1913, Mohács – 16 September 1999, Paris) was a Hungary, Hungarian-French Painting, painter.
Life
Endre Rozsda was born in Mohács, a small city along the Danube in Hungary. His childhood memories marked his enti ...
*
André Salmon
André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.
Biography
André Salmon was born i ...
*
Ardengo Soffici
Notable events
In 1908,
a celebration banquet for
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Gug ...
was organised in Picasso's studio in the .
One night,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...
destroyed a number of his friends' paintings while in an alcoholic rage in the , according to memoirs of his daughter,
Jeanne.
In popular culture
The is a featured setting in the 2018 season of ''
Genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for the future, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...
'', which focuses on the life and art of Pablo Picasso.
It is also featured in the 1995
Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher. Rohmer was the last of the Post-war, p ...
film ''
Les Rendez-vous de Paris
''Rendezvous in Paris'' () is a 1995 French romantic comedy anthology film written and directed by Éric Rohmer.
The film consists of three loosely connected episodes revolving around chance meetings in Paris: "Le Rendez-vous de 7 heures" ("The ...
''.
See also
*
La Ruche ''La Ruche'' may refer to:
* ''La Ruche'' (residence), artists' residence in Paris
* ''La Ruche'' (school), early 1900s anarchist school outside Paris
See also
* Beehive (disambiguation)
{{dab ...
, in Montparnasse, Paris
References
External links
"Cubism Birthplace Bateau-Lavoir"BlogSpot article with additional photographs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bateau-Lavoir, Le
Buildings and structures in Paris
History of art in France
History of Paris
Painting in Paris
Buildings and structures in the 18th arrondissement of Paris
Montmartre
Pablo Picasso
Amedeo Modigliani
Guillaume Apollinaire
Burned buildings and structures in France