Arrondissement: 9
Numbers 1, 8, 16, 49
The street offers an extraordinary view, notes Hazan (WTP), of the Sacré-Coeur rising above the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church. No better reason, perhaps for Fénéon to host at Number 1, the editorial offices of La Revue Blanche, the first Georges Seurat retrospective just a few months after the painter’s early death aged 32.
Fénéon became La Revue Blanche’s editor in 1896 and committed it strongly to defending Dreyfus from 1897. He published many articles by Léon Blum, then a young lawyer who in his spare time reported on the trials taking place.
Fénéon, Zola, Proust, Sorel, Claude Monet, Emile Durkheim and Daniel Halévy were among the signatures organised from the offices of La Revue Blanche on 15 January 1898 to an early petition to reopen Drefyus’ trial.
No. 8 was the location of the picture gallery opened in 1863 by Alexandre Bernheim, who displayed the paintings of Gustave Courbet and Camille Corot, among others, and who was the organiser of Van Gogh’s first Parisan exhibition in 1901.
In 1872, after Courbet had spent 9 months in jail for his part in the Paris Commune, his work was rejected for display at that year’s Salon. The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel then showed Courbet’s painting Fruits at the gallery he had opened at No. 16 in 1867.
In October 1906. after Marguerite Durand‘s La Fronde ceased publication in 1905, Jane Misme founded the weekly feminist 4-page journal, La Française: Journal de progrès féminin, whose offices were at No 49. It became the official outlet of the National Council of French Women (CNFF)
Origins
The old street Rue d’Artois was renamed in 1897 after one of France’s most influential bankers, Jacques Lafitte (1767-1844). His first job was in the Perregaux Bank, whose international connections led it to become the bank of the French Revolution’s Committee of Public Security, and then financial advisers to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1814 Laffitte was asked to head up the Bank of France, which he did until 1820. In the July 1830 Revolution he was one of the most important figures aiming to thwart any move towards a new republic and instead to secure the crown for Louis-Philippe of the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family.
Laffitte became the president of the Chamber of Deputies which declared the throne vacant and that Louis-Philippe was the new king. Laffitte became both President of the governing council and minister of finance in November 1830. He lasted only until March 1831 when he resigned as it became clear that Louis-Philippe was going to try and maintain all the monarch’s power over government rather than move towards a parliamentary government system.