Madame de florians apartment layout creator
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AD:The Velvet Hours seems to be a story about the importance and intrigue of private spaces. Is that a theme you work with often?
AR: This is the first novel that I’ve written where the private space of the characters has a life of its own. No one really knows why Solange left Paris and shuttered the apartment right before the war, so the mystery of why it was closed is an essential element of the story. Also, what happened within the walls of the apartment during Marthe de Florian’s lifetime made the apartment emerge almost as its own stage set. There is a unique sense of intimacy when you’re writing a novel that primarily takes place within a few select rooms. I felt as though I was writing a silken cocoon for my characters, a place where time inside the apartment literally stood still yet the world outside its doors was changing so dramatically.
AD: Treasured objects, like the painting and Marthe’s pearls, also seem to carry a great weight in the novel. Do you find that we can learn a lot about a person based on the objects they surround themselves with?
AR: I do. Nearly every object in the apartment contains a story and forms an invisible thread with its owner. The Boldini portrait reveals the depths of her relationship not only with the artist but also wi
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The Paris Constantly Capsule Apartment
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via Picture Telegraph, kodachromes © Getty
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American Girls Art Club In Paris. . . and Beyond
I’ve got a new Paris art novel for you: A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable (St. Martin’s Press 2014).
It all began with an amazing but true story of a long-lost Boldini portrait of a woman named Marthe de Florian, pictured below.
Madame de Florian by Giovanni Boldini (1888), private collection. Sold for 2.1 million euros at a Drouot house auction in September, 2010.
In 2010, the London Telegraph reported the fascinating true story about an abandoned Paris apartment. When estate representatives entered the dusty apartment, it had been untouched for 70 years. They discovered roomfuls of antiques and what appeared to be a previously unknown portrait by the Italian painter Giovanni Boldini. It turns out the woman in the portrait was Marthe de Florian, who had lived in the abandoned apartment back in the 1890s. A love letter from Boldini to de Florian confirmed the painting’s provenance and a record-setting auction followed.
Marthe de Florian’s apartment in Paris, abandoned by her descendants in 1940, reopened in 2010. (Source: michellegable.com/2014/04/finding-inspiration-moving-forward )
This book brings to mind one of my favorite art history novels, Gioia Diliberto’s I Am M