Marc Chagall
Chagall was known to Helena Rubinstein, who collected his work, and attended gatherings at her Ile Saint-Louis apartment.
Helena Rubinstein's apartment, 24 quai de Béthune
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The Île Saint-Louis apartment of the cosmetics magnate and collector Helena Rubinstein, whose gatherings Marc Chagall attended — one of the private rooms where the École de Paris was actually bought.
- 24 quai de Béthune, 75004 Paris
- Helena Rubinstein's Paris apartment and salon
The place, briefly
Helena Rubinstein built a cosmetics fortune from nothing and spent a great deal of it on art. Her collections ran from African sculpture to modern painting, and her Paris apartment on the southern quay of the Île Saint-Louis was where much of it hung and where she entertained.
Marc Chagall was among the artists she knew and collected, and he was a guest at her gatherings there. Rubinstein sat for a long line of painters — Dufy, Sutherland, Dalí among them — and treated portrait commissions as a form of patronage as much as vanity.
It is worth registering what these private rooms did. In the decades when French public institutions were slow and often hostile to the École de Paris, the market that kept those painters working was made up of dealers, decorators and self-made collectors, a striking number of whom were women and immigrants. Rubinstein was Polish-Jewish, arrived in Australia with nothing, and ended up on the Île Saint-Louis buying Chagalls.
The building is private.
Key facts
- Helena Rubinstein, cosmetics magnate and collector
- The southern quay of the Île Saint-Louis
- Known to her, collected by her, and a guest at her gatherings
- Dufy, Sutherland and Dalí among many
- Private — exterior only
Timeline
Rubinstein keeps her Paris apartment and collection on the quai de Béthune.
On the map
Questions before you go
Who was Helena Rubinstein?
A Polish-Jewish emigrant who built an international cosmetics business and became a major collector, with an apartment and salon on the Île Saint-Louis.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Madame Lecomte's
The riverside table on the far side of the Île Saint-Louis — wonderful food, Madame Lecomte at the door, and a forty-five-minute wait since the Americans found it.
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The apartment Paul Cézanne took on the Île Saint-Louis at the end of 1888, in the years when he had money, no reputation to speak of, and was painting the pictures that would rearrange European art after his death.
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The last place Camille Claudel lived and worked — a very small studio at the back of the courtyard of the Hôtel de Jassaud on the Île Saint-Louis, from January 1899 until she was committed in 1913. The building stands and carries a plaque; the studio is private.
Visit the place45 rue Jussieu
Paul Cézanne's Left Bank address in 1872 — the year his son Paul was born, and the year he went out to Pontoise to work beside Camille Pissarro, which changed his painting completely.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.