Women Paintings by Jules Pascin (1885 – 1930) ~ Blog of an Art Admirer

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Women Paintings by Jules Pascin (1885 – 1930)

Hermine David and a Friend, 1914

Composition with Three Women

Jules Pascin (born in Bulgaria as Julius Pinkas) was still a teenager when he decided to study painting. His father, a rich and powerful representative for the Austrian Emperor, didn't approve his son's palns to leave home.

It was the brothel owner in Bucarest who encouraged him to draw and induced him to go to Paris. He left for Vienna in 1903, where he enrolled in a local painting academy and met George Grosz.
In 1904, he met Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky in Munich. For 5 years Pascin had been working as an illustrator for the satirical German magazine Simplicissimus. During this period, at the request of his overbearing father the artist changed his name to Pascin.
In 1905 the artist moved to Paris. Very soon terrace cafes, Le Dôme and La Rotonde in Montparnasse district of Paris became his second home. He was introduced to Hermine David, an artist and student at the Julian Academy. She was already well-established as a successful young painter, miniaturist and printmaker. She was also a great-granddaughter of the revolutionary painter Jacques-Louis David. They became lovers and lived together in Montmartre and Montparnasse. Although in 1910 Pascin met Lucy Vidil, the model at the Matisse Academy, and fell in love with her.

Dressing Girl, 1912

Pascin was famous for his generosity and his parties with André Warnod, André Salmon, André Derain and Kisling.
When WWI broke out he left for America where he settled down in the Jewish neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Max

Weber and Maurice Sterne introduced him into the New York avant-garde. Hermine joined him a year later; they got married in US.
In 1920 the artist returned to Paris and kept partying at Le Dôme café, Le Jockey club, and the other haunts of the area’s bohemian society; whenever he was invited elsewhere for dinner he arrived with as many bottles of wine as he could carry. By that time Lucy had married the Norvegian artist Per Krogh.

Hermine David Sleeping,1916

Suffering from depression and alcoholism, he committed suicide on the eve of a prestigious solo show by slitting his wrists and hanging himself in his studio in Montmartre. On the wall he left a message written in his own blood that said good-bye to his lost love, Lucy Vidil Krohg. In his last will and testament Pascin left his estate equally to his mistress, Lucy Krohg, and to his wife, Hermine David.

On the day of Pascin’s funeral, June 7, 1930, all the galleries in Paris closed. Thousands of acquaintances from the artistic community along with dozens of waiters and bartenders from the restaurants and saloons he had frequented, all dressed in black, walked behind his coffin the three miles from his studio to the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen.