Pascin

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Jules Pascin

Julius Mordecai Pincas, (March 31, 1885 – June 5, 1930) known as Pascin, Jules Pascin, or "The Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian painter.

Julius Pincas was born in Vidin, Bulgaria to a Spanish-Sephardic Jewish father and a Serbian-Italian mother. He knew the language fluently, and he had some Bulgarian ancestry although details are unknown. He adopted his pseudonym after arriving in Paris in December of 1905, part of the great migration of artistic creativity to Paris at the start of the 20th century. Original name was Paskinian, and some ancestors connected to this family are proven to exist in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Although Pascin lived in America during World War I and was to return there briefly in 1927, obtaining American citizenship, Pascin became the symbol of the Montparnasse artistic community. Always in his bowler hat, he was a witty presence at Le Dôme café, Le Jockey club, and the others haunts of the area’s bohemian society. Within the lifetime of Pascin several returns to Bulgaria have occurred, one in 1923/1924, second is on unclear date.

Despite the constant partying, Pascin created thousands of watercolors and sketches, plus drawings and caricatures that he sold to various newspapers and magazines, and sometimes using existing art sources to fit the aim of the publisher, nevertheless uniquely adapting it to his own way. He studied the art of drawing at the Academy Colarossi and like his contemporary, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, he drew upon his surroundings and his friends, both male and female, as the objects for his works that were to show the typical style if his. He wanted to become a serious painter but in time he became deeply depressed over his inability to achieve critical success with his variety of efforts.

During the 1920s, Pascin mostly painted fragile petites filles, prostitutes waiting for clients, or models waiting for the sitting to end. His fleetingly rendered paintings sold readily, but the money he made was quickly spent. Magazines seemed to get only more 'classic' art and he aimed the opposite in his own opinion. Famous as the host of numerous large and raucous parties in his flat, whenever he was invited elsewhere for dinner he arrived with as many bottles of wine as he could carry. He frequently led a large group of friends on summer picnics beside the River Marne, their excursions lasting all afternoon. According to his biographer, Georges Charensol, "Scarcely had he chosen his table at the Dôme or the Sélect than he would be surrounded by five or six friends; at nine o'clock, when we got up to dinner, we would be 20 in all, and later in the evening, when we decided to go up to Montmartre to Charlotte Gardelle's or the Princess Marfa's — where Pascin loved to take the place of the drummer in the jazz band — he had to provide for 10 taxis."

In his story, A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway wrote a chapter titled With Pascin At the Dôme, recounting a night in 1923 when he had stopped off at Le Dôme and met Pascin escorted by two models. Hemingway's depiction of the events of that night are considered one of the defining images of Montparnasse at the time.

Behind Pascin’s panache lurked the terror of a tortured mind. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, "driven to the wall by his own legend", according to art critic Gaston Diehl, 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, Elvire "Lucy" Ventura.

On the day of Pascin’s funeral, 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 to the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen.

Few free image examples of Pascin's drawings and watercolors, residing at an established U.S. collection: