Seeing Gertrude Stein:Five Stories
May 12, 2011 through September 6, 2011
Chronology
1874
Gertrude Stein born on February 3 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (modern-day Pittsburgh)
1877
Alice Babette Toklas born on April 30 in San Francisco, California
1880
Stein family moves to Oakland, California
1893
Gertrude enrolls at Harvard Annex, soon to become Radcliffe College
1897
Gertrude enrolls at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
1903
Moves into her brother, Leo Stein’s apartment in Paris, at 27, rue de Fleurus
1904
Eldest brother Michael and his wife, Sarah, move to Paris with their eight-year-old son, Allan
1905
Leo and Gertrude purchase their first paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso
Saturday night salons begin at 27, rue de Fleurus
1906
Pablo Picasso completes his portrait of Gertrude
1909
Three Lives, Gertrude’s first published book, is released
1907
Alice arrives in Paris with Harried Lane Levy
1910
Alice moves into 27, rue de Fleurus
1912
Word portraits of Matisse and Picasso published in Camera Work
1913
Leo Stein and Gertrude Stein decide to break up their household and collection and soon part
ways for good
1916
Gertrude and Alice volunteer for the American Fund for French Wounded and deliver supplies to
hospitals in the south of France in their Ford van they call “Auntie”
1922
Ernest Hemingway moves to Paris, where he meets Gertrude Stein and is introduced to a group
of young expatriate writers, whom Stein names the “Lost Generation”
1926
Alice cuts Gertrude’s hair
Gertrude lectures at Cambridge and Oxford Universities
Seeing Gertrude Stein:Five Stories
May 12, 2011 through September 6, 2011
Chronology
1929
Gertrude buys a two-seater open Ford, which she and Alice call “Godiva”
Their dog Basket arrives
Gertrude and Alice lease a manor house in the south of France at Bilignin for the first time
1933
Harcourt Brace publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Another dog, Pépé, arrives
1934
Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera with a libretto by Gertrude, premieres in Hartford,
Connecticut, and then goes to Broadway
Gertrude and Alice sail for New York City to begin Gertrude’s American lecture tour
1935
Gertrude and Alice return to Paris
Michael and Sarah Stein return to the Bay Area from France
1937
Gertrude Stein decides to give her manuscripts to Yale University
1938
Gertrude and Alice move to 5, rue Christine
Michael dies of cancer
1939
Gertrude and Alice decide to stay in Bilignin, in the south of France with a stay in nearby Culoz
towards the end of the war
They return to their apartment in Paris on a 36-hour pass to retrieve Picasso’s portrait of Stein
and Cézanne’s portrait of his wife
1941
First exhibition at the Yale University Library of selection from the Stein archives
1944
Gertrude and Alice return to Paris after France is liberated by the French Resistance and Allied
forces
1945
Gertrude tours U.S. Army bases in Germany and lectures to troops in Brussels; she and Alice
entertain GIs at 5, rue Christine
Seeing Gertrude Stein:Five Stories
May 12, 2011 through September 6, 2011
Chronology
1946
Gertrude writes her will, leaving Picasso’s portrait of her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York City
Gertrude dies of colon/stomach cancer on July 27 at the American Hospital, Neuilly-sur-Seine
1947
Major exhibition at the Yale University Library of materials drawn from the Stein-Toklas archives
Leo Stein dies
1949
The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is published in the United States and England
1967
Alice dies on March 7; she is buried next to Gertrude