ENCOUNTERS

ENCOUNTERS

Throughout her life, Eileen Gray cultivated relationships in a number of different networks: artists and writers she met in London and Paris; dancers, choreographers, and set designers who influenced her design work; couturiers, socialites, and nobility who formed the clientele at her Paris Galerie Jean Désert; and architects and designers whose friendship and collaboration spanned much of her adult life. Explore Gray’s creative networks below.

Throughout her life, Eileen Gray cultivated relationships in a number of different networks: artists and writers she met in London and Paris; dancers, choreographers, and set designers who influenced her design work; couturiers, socialites, and nobility who formed the clientele at her Paris Galerie Jean Désert; and architects and designers whose friendship and collaboration spanned much of her adult life. Explore Gray’s creative networks below.

Graphic representation of Eileen Gray's social networks featuring color-coded images of 23 of her friends, clients, and acquaintances.

Alvin Langdon Coburn. Wyndham Lewis, London, February 25, 1916. Silver gelatin print, printed ca. 1957 by Alvin Langdon Coburn. Eastman Museum, Bequest of Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1967.0154.0014. © The Universal Order.
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English writer, painter, critic, and friend of Gray’s whom she met in London. In 1902 he goes to Paris with Gray and several of their friends.

 

Sir Oswald Birley. Sir Gerald Kelly, 1920. Oil on canvas. © National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 5346.
Gerald Festus Kelly was a British painter Gray met in London. He moves to Paris in 1902 with Gray and several of their friends. Kelly was one of Gray’s many admirers during this period.

 

Hazy image of a woman's head and shoulders. She is looking down, wearing dark clothing, and her hair is pulled back messily.

Stephen Haweis. Mina Loy, ca. 1905. Photograph. Courtesy of Roger L. Conover.
Mina Loy is a friend of Gray’s for a brief time before the First World War. Loy was a writer, poet, playwright, novelist, and painter who married Stephen Haweis in 1903 and became affiliated with the Futurists.

 

Crowley sits on a chair with his elbows leaning on his knees. His chin is propped on his right hand and he wears a dark striped suit and a silk necktie.

Aleister Crowley, 1906. Photograph. Warburg Institute.
In Paris, Gerald Festus Kelly introduces Gray to Auguste Rodin and the occultist Aleister Crowley. Gray declines Crowley's marriage request but often frequented what he calls in his autobiography the “English colony of Montparnasse.”

 

Stephen Haweis. Embryo Project Encyclopedia (1923). © Photo courtesy of the Marine Biological Laboratory Archives and the History of Marine Biological Laboratory website (history.archives.mbl.edu).
British writer, painter, and photographer Stephen Haweis was a student at the Académie Julian with Gray. The two met in Paris and remained friends until his death, exchanging letters even after Haweis emigrated to Dominica in 1929.

 

hérèse Bonney. Chana Orloff in her studio, 1925. Photograph. © BHVP / Roger-Viollet, RV-100522-8. @ The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Cubist sculptor Chana Orloff designed the letterhead stationery for Gray’s Galerie Jean Désert and introduces Gray to other artists.

 

Chana Orloff introduces Gray to the Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Though Gray likes his work, their rapport is relatively distant.

Eileen Gray. Le Corbusier and his wife, Yvonne Gallis, with Jean Badovici at E 1027, after 1924. Photograph. Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2020.
Gray’s first meets Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) in the early 1920s. Their shared friendship with Jean Badovici results in intermittent encounters leading up to the presentation of Gray’s Vacation Center project in Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de Temps Nouveau at the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, in Paris. Their relationship remained distant and became even more so when, in 1937, Le Corbusier paints large frescoes on the walls of E 1027 without informing Gray. In 1952, Le Corbusier builds his cabin in the shadow of the house Gray and Badovici had designed.

 

Gray’s design for a table in 1922 is an homage to the ideals of De Stijl and furniture designs by Gerrit Rietveld.

In 1922, Gray participates in an exhibition of French designers in Amsterdam. Her work attracts the attention of Jan Wils, a member of the Dutch avant-garde De Stijl, and the two exchange letters.

After her trip to Mexico in 1920, Gray travels back to Paris through New York, where she meets Austrian-American architect and artist Frederick Kiesler.

In 1923, Gray’s Chambre à coucher boudoir pour Monte-Carlo (Bedroom/Boudoir for Monte Carlo) attracts favorable attention from J.J.P. Oud, a Dutch architect and member of De Stijl. Their correspondence is an important stimulus for Gray to work in a more progressive design idiom.

Gray meets Mexican painters Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, in the spring of 1934 when she travels to Mexico by boat with Badovici. She visits Acapulco and Oaxaca on this trip as well, and while in Mexico City has lunch with Rivera and Kahlo.

The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles were wealthy patrons of Gray’s Galerie Jean Désert. Eileen Gray designed a rug and a table for Marie-Laure’s bedroom at the Villa Noailles in 1926.

Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, with dedication to Samuel Hill, 1919. Photograph. Collection of the Maryhill Museum of Art, AAF-0983.
Loïe Fuller and Gab Sorère introduced Rodin to their American friend Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, who was an influential collector and patron in the United States. Gray, Rodin, and de Bretteville Spreckels organized the transportation of their works to be shown at the San Francisco Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915, but some of the objects never returned to France. Fuller, Sorère, and de Bretteville Spreckels were key figures in the circle of Americans who would eventually make up the clientele of Gray’s Galerie Jean Désert.

 

Kathleen Bruce, 1907. Photograph. Private collection.
In 1900, Eileen Gray befriends Kathleen Bruce at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. They leave in 1902 to study together in Paris, where they share an apartment near Montparnasse. Kathleen Bruce studied with Rodin and had an established career as a sculptor.

 

Berenice Abbott. Portrait of Eileen Gray, Paris, 1926. Silver gelatin print. National Museum Ireland, NMIEG 2003.568.

 

Gray meets sculptor Auguste Rodin while she is a student in Paris. She corresponds with him and buys his Danaïd in 1903.

Jean Badovici, ca. 1920. Silver gelatin print. Collection Gilles Peyroulet, Paris.
Eileen Gray is believed to have met Romanian architect Jean Badovici in the early 1920s. In 1923, Badovici founds a new magazine published by Albert Morancé called L’Architecture Vivante. Badovici was editor-in-chief for the next ten years. Gray enjoyed privileged access to Badovici’s network, which included some of the most important architects of the period, including Le Corbusier. A large part of Gray’s architectural training likely comes from these contacts and through her analysis of the projects Badovici received for publication in the magazine. Gray designed Badovici’s Paris apartment on the rue de Châteaubriand (1929–31). Their relationship is the source of considerable speculation, particularly whether or not they were lovers. What is known is that they remained friends until his death in Monaco in 1956.

 

Bertram Park. Isadora Duncan, 1921. Bromide print. © Estate of Bertram Park / Camera Press.
American dancer Isadora Duncan was one of Gray’s friends and clients.

 

Albert Harlingue. Natalie Clifford in front of her temple of friendship, 20, rue Jacob, Paris, ca. 1925–30. © Albert Harlingue/Roger-Viollet HRL-638548.
Gray becomes a regular at the Parisian salons held by American writer and expatriate Natalie Clifford Barney in her so-called Temple de l’Amitié (Temple of Friendship) at 20, rue Jacob, near Gray’s apartment.

 

Loïe Fuller dancing the Tanz de Lilie, ca. 1896. Photograph. Austrian Archives / Imagno / picturedesk.com.
American actress and celebrated dancer Loïe Fuller was a friend of Gray’s who exhibited her studies of colorful fabrics at the Galerie Jean Desert.

 

Romaine Brooks. La Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, 1932. Oil on canvas. © Musée Carnavalet–cliché parisienne de photographie, RV 33214-1.
Gray’s participation in the 1913 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs attracted the attention of Elisabeth de Gramont, the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, a society hostess whose wide social circle included Gertrude Stein and Natalie Clifford Barney. In 1915, she and Gray become ambulance drivers in wartime Paris. Later in 1922, the Duchess would publish the first French-language article on Gray’s work in Lucien Vogel’s Les Feuillets d’Art.

 

Thérèse Bonney. Susanne Talbot in her apartment at 9, rue de Lota, Paris, February 1930. Photograph. © BHVP / Roger-Viollet, RV-42062-1. @ The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
In 1919, Gray is commissioned to design the apartment at 9, rue de Lota, Paris, belonging to Madame Juliette Lévy, a milliner and the wealthy owner of the J. Suzanne Talbot fashion house.

 

Kichizo Inagaki, unknown date. Photograph. Courtesy Jean Lafosse, Paris.
Kichizo Inagaki was a Japanese cabinetmaker and plinth-maker who worked for Rodin and started making furniture for Gray in 1918.

 

Eileen Gray. Seizo Sugawara in Eileen Gray’s studio, 11, rue Guénégaud, Paris, undated. Photograph. National Museum of Ireland, NMIEG 2003.551.
In 1906, Gray meets Seizo Sugawara, a master craftsman of Japanese lacquer living in Paris. Although lacquer was a labor-intensive medium created through a process that could potentially be toxic, Gray became a devoted student of Sugawara and the two established a lacquer workshop in Paris in 1910 on the rue Guénégaud. Gray publicly exhibited examples of her lacquer work in 1913. It was through Sugawara that Gray met other lacquer specialists, including Kichizo Inagaki (1876–1951) and Katsu Hamanaka (1895–1982).

 

Gabrielle Bloch (Gab Sorère) from Loïe Fuller, Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life (London: H. Jenkins, 1913), 253. Archive.org.
Gabrielle Bloch (who often went by the name Gab Sorère) may have been the friend who introduced Eileen Gray to Damia. In 1912, Gray and Bloch traveled by train through the United States with Gray’s sister Thora (1875–1966) and friend Florence Gardiner (1878–1963).

 

Marisa Damia, with dedication to Eileen Gray. Silver gelatin print. National Museum of Ireland, NMIEG 2003.561./div>
A gendarme’s daughter who became the celebrated music-hall singer known as Damia, she was a customer at Gray’s Galerie Jean Désert.

 

Man Ray. Romaine Brooks, 1925. Silver gelatin print. Centre Pompidou, Paris, AM1995-281(1038). © Guy Carrard, CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2020.
The American expatriate painter and designer Romaine Brooks was a lifelong companion of Natalie Clifford Barney’s and a good friend of Gray’s.

 

Man Ray. Nancy Cunard, 1926. Silver gelatin print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987, 1987.1100.131. © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2020.
British writer Nancy Cunard was among Gray's circle of friends and clients.

 

Jacques Doucet, ca. 1915. Photograph. Collection Gilles Peyroulet, Paris.
Couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet sees Eileen Gray’s first lacquer works at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1913. He visits her studio, studies her work, and purchases a four-panel screen entitled Le destin (Fate), the only piece signed and dated in Gray’s hand. Between 1913 and 1915, Doucet commissions from Gray several pieces of furniture for his apartment in the Avenue du Bois, and then, in 1926, for his studio on the rue Saint-James in Neuilly. These include the Table aux chars (Chariot table) in the entrance hall, the Bilboquet table in the center of the gallery, and the “Lotus” table in the Oriental Cabinet. The auction of his collection in 1972 at the Hotel Drouot marks the rediscovery of Eileen Gray’s work.

 

Man Ray. Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, Maharaja of Indore, 1927–30. Photograph. Centre Pompidou, Paris, AM 1994-394 (1274). © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2020.
The Maharaja was one of Gray’s most prestigious clients. In the early 1930s, he purchases a lacquered Fauteuil transat (Transat chair) for his bedroom at the Manik Bagh palace in Indore.

 

In 1901 while at the Slade School in London, Gray meets furniture restorer Dean Charles who teaches her lacquer techniques at his Soho company at 92 Dean Street.

Evelyn Wyld was a lifelong friend and business partner who produced Gray’s rug designs beginning in 1910 in their Paris studio at 17–19, rue Visconti.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gray becomes increasingly reliant on her niece, artist Prunella Clough, due to her deteriorating eyesight. Gray feels that she found a kindred spirit in Clough, and their friendship and regular letters become Gray’s lifeline until her death in 1976.