Harriet Lane Levy
Encyclopedia
Harriet Lane Levy is a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a girlhood friend of Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...

, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

. She was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family and raised in San Francisco. As the first part of her autobiography, 920 O’Farrell Street chronicles her childhood in an upper-middle-class San Francisco neighborhood. Additionally, young women such as Levy were expected to marry well-off men, which generated additional societal expectations. However, the intellectually inclined Levy was hesitant to marry early. Instead, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1886 and became a prominent writer for popular San Francisco publications, like the San Francisco Call
San Francisco Call
The San Francisco Call was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called The San Francisco Call & Post, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and the News-Call Bulletin...

. She also wrote for The Wave with notable writers such as Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

 and Frank Norris
Frank Norris
Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...

. Another one of Levy’s passions was traveling. She visited Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 many times, the first being with her friends Michael (brother of Gertrude Stein) and Sarah Stein. She later returned to live in Paris with Toklas for two years. In 1910 she resettled in San Francisco, at the age of 47, continuing to live independently by pursuing her intellectual interests (such as psychology and Christian Science) until her death in 1950. (image of Harriet Levy and Alice B. Toklas)

Connections to Gertrude Stein

Levy was the subject of one of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

's early word portraits, and the subject of much effort on the part of Toklas and Stein to return Levy to San Francisco sans Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...

, her original traveling companion. (Stein, 1934, p. 105-07).

Levy wrote a description of the famed Rousseau Banquet which was published in a limited edition of 30 copies, in 1985 as part of a UC Berkeley seminar:
(discussion of the Levy posthumous publication appears at page 4 of this Charles Hobson catalog).

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Benefactor

Harriet Lane Levy bequeathed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

:

André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...

, Paysage du midi, 1906 oil on canvas;

Peter David Edstrom
Peter David Edstrom
Peter David Edstrom was an American sculptor.-Background:...

, Portrait of Miss Levy, ca. 1907-1908
terracotta;

Henri Manguin
Henri Manguin
Henri Charles Manguin[p] was a French painter, associated with Les Fauves.Manguin entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study under Gustave Moreau, as did Matisse and Charles Camoin with whom he became close friends...

, Nu sous les arbres (Nude beneath the Trees) (study), 1905 oil on canvasboard; Corsican Landscape;

Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Corsican Landscape, 1899 oil on canvas; La Table au café (Café Table), ca. 1899 oil on canvas; Le Serf (The Slave), 1900–1903, bronze; Madeleine, I, 1901 bronze; Flowers, 1905 oil on cardboard; Assiette de fruits (Fruit Dish), 1902-1903 oil on canvas 1907; La fille aux yeux verts (The Girl with Green Eyes), 1908 oil on canvas; Grosse tête; Henriette, II (Large Head; Henriette, II), 1927 bronze;

Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Scène de rue (Street Scene), 1900 oil on canvas.

Primary sources

  • Levy, Harriet Lane, 920 O'Farrell Street. Doubleday, 1947; Santa Clara University Heyday Books, 1996. ISBN 0930588916.

  • Levy, Harriet Lane, A Supper in Montmartre, Bancroftiana, April 1986.

Secondary sources

  • Kellner, Bruce, ed. A Gertrude Stein Companion: Content with the Example. New York, Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 1988. ISBN 0313250782.

  • Mellow, James R. Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company. New York, Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1974. ISBN 0395479827.

  • Stein, Gertrude. Harriet in Portraits and Prayers. New York: Random House, 1934. ISBN 9781135761981 ISBN 113576198.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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