Le Bateau-Lavoir
Le Bateau-Lavoir was a squalid block of buildings in
Montmartre,
Paris situated at 13 Rue Ravignan (Place Emile Goudeau). The place
is famous because at the turn of the
20th century a group of outstanding
artists lived and rented artistic studios there.
First artists started to settle at the Bateau-Lavoir in the
1890s but
after
1914 they started to move elsewhere (mainly
Montparnasse).
The name of the place means the laundry-boat because it resembled
boats of laundry women.
Indisputably the most famous resident of the place was Pablo Picasso
(1904-1909). He reputedly invented cubism there and painted one of his finest works Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
Other well-known artists who lived in the Bateau-Lavoir:
At that time the tenement house was a meeting place of a lot of prominent figures of artistic avant-garde, like
Guillaume Apollinaire,
Georges Braque,
Henri Matisse,
Jean Cocteau,
Gertrude Stein and others. According to his daughter, Jeanne, while living there
Amedeo Modigliani one night in an alcoholic rage destroyed a number of his friends paintings.
In 1908 a celebration banquet for Henri Rousseau was organized in Picasso's studio in the Bateau-Lavoir.
See also: La Ruche, in Montparnasse, Paris.