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10 11

In 1964, when Roy Newquist asked Lee Harper, author of a single novel5, (still considered one of the

leading novels of 20th-century American literature), what would be the subject of her second novel,

she simply answered: “I said all I have to say6” and… she never wrote anything else.

Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Radiguet, August Macke and, more recently Bernard-Marie Koltès, Jean-

Michel Basquiat and Amy Winehouse; examples of artists with careers like shooting stars are not that

unusual. Daniel Barr called Eyre de Lanux the “Gerald Murphy of interiors.”

The comparison is apropos. An American expatriate in France in the immediate postwar years, the New

York art dealer Gerald Murphy was an inspiration for Scott Fitzgerald’s character Dick Diver of Tender

Is the Night. Eyre de Lanux, another American expatriate during the same period, inspired the poet

Louis Aragon and the novelist Tennessee Williams. Between 1922 and 1924, Gerald Murphy painted

fourteen canvases before outgrowing his passion7. Eyre de Lanux dedicated herself to decorating for

just a brief time (if not to say occasionally, taking into account the multitude of other activities she

was involved in during her long life) and did not produce much more than Murphy. Only six remaining

paintings of Gerald Murphy’s oeuvre are known and located, but they were so radically new that they

foreshadowed Pop Art forty years ahead of its time. Only a few pieces of furniture by Eyre de Lanux

are known, and there are only a handful of photographs documenting her interiors, but they are so

imaginative, so original and daring that they obviously have a rightful place of honor in the history of

20th-century interiors.

Man Ray, photograph of Sara and Gerald Murphy

at the automobile ball or “bal de l’automobile,” at the home of the comte de Beaumont, circa 1924.

Eyre de Lanux, a meteorite of an interior decorator, 1927-1935

10 11

In 1964, when Roy Newquist asked Lee Harper, author of a single novel5, (still considered one of the

leading novels of 20th-century American literature), what would be the subject of her second novel,

she simply answered: “I said all I have to say6” and… she never wrote anything else.

Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Radiguet, August Macke and, more recently Bernard-Marie Koltès, Jean-

Michel Basquiat and Amy Winehouse; examples of artists with careers like shooting stars are not that

unusual. Daniel Barr called Eyre de Lanux the “Gerald Murphy of interiors.”

The comparison is apropos. An American expatriate in France in the immediate postwar years, the New

York art dealer Gerald Murphy was an inspiration for Scott Fitzgerald’s character Dick Diver of Tender

Is the Night. Eyre de Lanux, another American expatriate during the same period, inspired the poet

Louis Aragon and the novelist Tennessee Williams. Between 1922 and 1924, Gerald Murphy painted

fourteen canvases before outgrowing his passion7. Eyre de Lanux dedicated herself to decorating for

just a brief time (if not to say occasionally, taking into account the multitude of other activities she

was involved in during her long life) and did not produce much more than Murphy. Only six remaining

paintings of Gerald Murphy’s oeuvre are known and located, but they were so radically new that they

foreshadowed Pop Art forty years ahead of its time. Only a few pieces of furniture by Eyre de Lanux

are known, and there are only a handful of photographs documenting her interiors, but they are so

imaginative, so original and daring that they obviously have a rightful place of honor in the history of

20th-century interiors.

Man Ray, photograph of Sara and Gerald Murphy

at the automobile ball or “bal de l’automobile,” at the home of the comte de Beaumont, circa 1924.

Eyre de Lanux, a meteorite of an interior decorator, 1927-1935

38 39

Elizabeth met Constantin Brancusi toward the end of 1920, thanks to her friendship with Ezra

Pound, whom she had met at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Pound was among the first to

comment on and understand the Romanian sculptor’s approach. In parallel with his sculpture, Brancusi

was experimenting with fresco, a technique Elizabeth asked him to teach her.

However, spending time with a genius like Brancusi was not limited to something as prosaic as mere

technique. He challenged Elizabeth by introducing her to the mysteries of the mineral and vegetal

world. She learned, or rather, being intuitive, she sensed that one had to take what great artists cannot

teach but which they allow others to steal if they can use it to their advantage. She came to understand

that the stonecutter can only split a stone by speaking to it, that things have a soul; that the material

is what determines the form and not the opposite, and what differentiates the ironmonger from the

goldsmith, whose burin can bring out the glory in any material. She had great aptitude for understanding

the deeper nature of things and their secret geographies. She learned that each piece of wood, each stone

has its own color, grain, texture and hardness, its own mystique and poetry. Sensitive and intelligent,

Elizabeth developed her skills through observation. She assimilated Brancusi’s asceticism, which he had

begun to develop in his work before 1914 and had been constantly refining ever since: “Simplicity, he

said, “is not the aim in art, but one arrives at it in spite of oneself, by approaching ever more closely the

sense of the real in things70.” Seeking to distinguish art from a “nervous breakdown71” and beauty from

“grimaces and inadvertent gestures,” he reached the point where he discovered so to speak a mystique

of volume and the appearance a form must have from a precisely stretched and flawless skin. “Polishing

is a necessity required by the relatively absolute forms of certain materials. But it is not mandatory, even

if it is very harmful to those who are making steak [sic]72.”

In the light of this experience, Eyre de Lanux would later repeat this experimentation with form and

the appearance of surfaces, materials and colors in her future furniture designs. But in the meantime,

for Elizabeth, Paris was a feast, and this was just the beginning. She worked with great passion: “I

hadn’t painted during the war, and for the two years my husband was involved in the peace conference,

I studied with Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson in the Latin Quarter. Contrary to the dreadful

way French artists behaved in relation to work, I dove into it with an uncharacteristic ardor, seeking

to get the most out of all the opportunities that were available to me73.”

Work was serious for her. It was in her genes. Elizabeth set out to build on the foundations she had

previously acquired at the Art Students League of New York. Paris and everything that was to be

learned there made it possible to turn her desires into certainties. She was now sure. She would be an

artist. As she was developing her skills, she sensed that behind Elizabeth, there was Eyre, just waiting

for her moment to emerge.Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux,

sculptures, direct carving, 1915-1920.Constantin Brancusi, preparatory study for the sculpture of the baronne Renée Frachon, 1908-1909.

38 39

Elizabeth met Constantin Brancusi toward the end of 1920, thanks to her friendship with Ezra

Pound, whom she had met at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Pound was among the first to

comment on and understand the Romanian sculptor’s approach. In parallel with his sculpture, Brancusi

was experimenting with fresco, a technique Elizabeth asked him to teach her.

However, spending time with a genius like Brancusi was not limited to something as prosaic as mere

technique. He challenged Elizabeth by introducing her to the mysteries of the mineral and vegetal

world. She learned, or rather, being intuitive, she sensed that one had to take what great artists cannot

teach but which they allow others to steal if they can use it to their advantage. She came to understand

that the stonecutter can only split a stone by speaking to it, that things have a soul; that the material

is what determines the form and not the opposite, and what differentiates the ironmonger from the

goldsmith, whose burin can bring out the glory in any material. She had great aptitude for understanding

the deeper nature of things and their secret geographies. She learned that each piece of wood, each stone

has its own color, grain, texture and hardness, its own mystique and poetry. Sensitive and intelligent,

Elizabeth developed her skills through observation. She assimilated Brancusi’s asceticism, which he had

begun to develop in his work before 1914 and had been constantly refining ever since: “Simplicity, he

said, “is not the aim in art, but one arrives at it in spite of oneself, by approaching ever more closely the

sense of the real in things70.” Seeking to distinguish art from a “nervous breakdown71” and beauty from

“grimaces and inadvertent gestures,” he reached the point where he discovered so to speak a mystique

of volume and the appearance a form must have from a precisely stretched and flawless skin. “Polishing

is a necessity required by the relatively absolute forms of certain materials. But it is not mandatory, even

if it is very harmful to those who are making steak [sic]72.”

In the light of this experience, Eyre de Lanux would later repeat this experimentation with form and

the appearance of surfaces, materials and colors in her future furniture designs. But in the meantime,

for Elizabeth, Paris was a feast, and this was just the beginning. She worked with great passion: “I

hadn’t painted during the war, and for the two years my husband was involved in the peace conference,

I studied with Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson in the Latin Quarter. Contrary to the dreadful

way French artists behaved in relation to work, I dove into it with an uncharacteristic ardor, seeking

to get the most out of all the opportunities that were available to me73.”

Work was serious for her. It was in her genes. Elizabeth set out to build on the foundations she had

previously acquired at the Art Students League of New York. Paris and everything that was to be

learned there made it possible to turn her desires into certainties. She was now sure. She would be an

artist. As she was developing her skills, she sensed that behind Elizabeth, there was Eyre, just waiting

for her moment to emerge.Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux,

sculptures, direct carving, 1915-1920.Constantin Brancusi, preparatory study for the sculpture of the baronne Renée Frachon, 1908-1909.

40 41

Perhaps no other lines distill the zeitgeist of the times better than those of Mireille Havet, who was

busy burning the candle of her life at both ends. It was a time of dances, cocaine, opium and shots of

port wine, the age when Antoine styled the boys’ hair “à l’embusqué,” i.e., slicked up and back from

the forehead and bobbed for the girls, “à la garçonne,” a sort of very short pageboy cut.

Paris was rolling along at high speed on the shining rails of the 20th century74. In 1918, in Le Coq et

l’Arlequin (“The Rooster and the Harlequin”), Cocteau wrote: “Impressionism had just held its last

fireworks display and the end of a long feast. It’s up to us to fill the firecrackers for a new feast […]

We gently close the eyes of the deceased; now we must also gently open the eyes of the living.” Six

years had already gone by since November 15, 1913, when the first issue of the Soirées de Paris, under

the direction of Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cérusse75, featured a Cubist composition by Picasso

on the inside front cover. Apollinaire had invented the term two years before in 1911, responding to

the sobriquet of “cubisteurs,” a nickname with which Braque had saddled the painters participating

in the Section d’Or. Picasso and Braque criticized them for harvesting fields they had not sown. The

“cubisteurs” needed an advocate, which fit perfectly with Apollinaire’s line of work.

Twelve years had passed – an eternity – and artistic and literary Paris had long since assimilated

Cubism, which in any case was already on the decline. For more than twelve years, Matisse, Picasso

and Braque had been furiously daubing their paint brushes on their palettes, constantly pushing

the canons of traditional painting beyond their limits. Matisse fired the first shot in 1906 when he

exhibited his 175 x 241 centimeter canvas the Bonheur de vivre at the Salon des Indépendants.

Picasso immediately figured out that if he wanted to remain leader of the pack he would have to

up the ante in big way. He set to work seeking an answer to this challenge from that autumn. After

spending several months perfecting his response, by the end of spring 1907, he had completed

Le Bordel d’Avignon. And it was indeed much bigger (244 x 234 centimeters), went much further

and was even more modern. Unfortunately, except for Gertrude Stein and Louis Aragon, no one

understood it76, his friends least of all. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon would remain rolled up gathering

dust and mold in a corner of his studio for ten years, being exhibited only briefly at the Salon

d’Antin, before the art world realized that in it was a major turning point in the history of art77. In

1907, Braque retaliated with Grand Nu78, which laid the groundwork for Cubism. But all in all, what

came out of all this was a bit like what placed Let it Be in competition with Let it Bleed. To prefer

one of them in no way diminished the qualities of the other.

In the literary sphere, the NRF was 11 years old. In 1914, during which time André Gide had sold no

more than 122 copies of Les Caves du Vatican, it was already part of the prehistory of his career. Dada

was in full swing. Shocking the bourgeoisie had become an art whose paroxysms were on the verge

of peaking. On the tract for the Dada Festival of May 1920 (Salle Gaveau), Francis Picabia wrote:

“Wisdom is no more than a big cloud on the horizon.”

Four years had passed since Adrienne Monnier, the plump little Savoyard, who was both robust and

soft, with a cigarette perpetually hanging from her lips, always attired in a costume half nun’s habit

and half shepherdess outfit, opened a place that to some resembled a farm and to others a convent. It

was here she would reinvent the trade of bookselling. She lent the books first because, to her mind, Man Ray,

portrait of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, circa 1925.

Elizabeth Eyre becomes Eyre de Lanux

“The whole world pulls at you from the center of your belly.”

Mireille Havet, Journal, 1919

40 41

Perhaps no other lines distill the zeitgeist of the times better than those of Mireille Havet, who was

busy burning the candle of her life at both ends. It was a time of dances, cocaine, opium and shots of

port wine, the age when Antoine styled the boys’ hair “à l’embusqué,” i.e., slicked up and back from

the forehead and bobbed for the girls, “à la garçonne,” a sort of very short pageboy cut.

Paris was rolling along at high speed on the shining rails of the 20th century74. In 1918, in Le Coq et

l’Arlequin (“The Rooster and the Harlequin”), Cocteau wrote: “Impressionism had just held its last

fireworks display and the end of a long feast. It’s up to us to fill the firecrackers for a new feast […]

We gently close the eyes of the deceased; now we must also gently open the eyes of the living.” Six

years had already gone by since November 15, 1913, when the first issue of the Soirées de Paris, under

the direction of Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cérusse75, featured a Cubist composition by Picasso

on the inside front cover. Apollinaire had invented the term two years before in 1911, responding to

the sobriquet of “cubisteurs,” a nickname with which Braque had saddled the painters participating

in the Section d’Or. Picasso and Braque criticized them for harvesting fields they had not sown. The

“cubisteurs” needed an advocate, which fit perfectly with Apollinaire’s line of work.

Twelve years had passed – an eternity – and artistic and literary Paris had long since assimilated

Cubism, which in any case was already on the decline. For more than twelve years, Matisse, Picasso

and Braque had been furiously daubing their paint brushes on their palettes, constantly pushing

the canons of traditional painting beyond their limits. Matisse fired the first shot in 1906 when he

exhibited his 175 x 241 centimeter canvas the Bonheur de vivre at the Salon des Indépendants.

Picasso immediately figured out that if he wanted to remain leader of the pack he would have to

up the ante in big way. He set to work seeking an answer to this challenge from that autumn. After

spending several months perfecting his response, by the end of spring 1907, he had completed

Le Bordel d’Avignon. And it was indeed much bigger (244 x 234 centimeters), went much further

and was even more modern. Unfortunately, except for Gertrude Stein and Louis Aragon, no one

understood it76, his friends least of all. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon would remain rolled up gathering

dust and mold in a corner of his studio for ten years, being exhibited only briefly at the Salon

d’Antin, before the art world realized that in it was a major turning point in the history of art77. In

1907, Braque retaliated with Grand Nu78, which laid the groundwork for Cubism. But all in all, what

came out of all this was a bit like what placed Let it Be in competition with Let it Bleed. To prefer

one of them in no way diminished the qualities of the other.

In the literary sphere, the NRF was 11 years old. In 1914, during which time André Gide had sold no

more than 122 copies of Les Caves du Vatican, it was already part of the prehistory of his career. Dada

was in full swing. Shocking the bourgeoisie had become an art whose paroxysms were on the verge

of peaking. On the tract for the Dada Festival of May 1920 (Salle Gaveau), Francis Picabia wrote:

“Wisdom is no more than a big cloud on the horizon.”

Four years had passed since Adrienne Monnier, the plump little Savoyard, who was both robust and

soft, with a cigarette perpetually hanging from her lips, always attired in a costume half nun’s habit

and half shepherdess outfit, opened a place that to some resembled a farm and to others a convent. It

was here she would reinvent the trade of bookselling. She lent the books first because, to her mind, Man Ray,

portrait of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, circa 1925.

Elizabeth Eyre becomes Eyre de Lanux

“The whole world pulls at you from the center of your belly.”

Mireille Havet, Journal, 1919

60 61

filters of individual sensibilities, no one − except Le Corbusier − was proposing a genuine reformulation

of the dwelling taking modern living as its yardstick. He was the only one daring to start with a tabula rasa

capable of integrating the technical innovations that were revolutionizing modern everyday life, with each

passing year bringing a slew of new ones. These innovations (which were opening the path to the modern

dwelling as we conceive of it today) were not appealing to public tastes. They were badly perceived, even

objects of contempt. This attitude was almost exclusively a French one. As proof, the bedroom-boudoir for

Monte Carlo by Eileen Gray (1923), which concentrated all the thinking she had done for the apartment of

Madame Lévy in the rue de Lota, was characterized by the French critics as the “cabinet of the daughter

of Dr. Caligari135,” whereas the Dutch magazine Wendingen dedicated an article filled with praise of her

creations; which in turn attracted the attention of the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud.

of materials, these are the main aesthetic concerns of these experimenters. Thus, according to them, the

furniture of today will offer a better fit with all these scientific applications we now live with and which

have become inseparable from our desire to ensure comfort and good hygiene. And now we find ourselves

far removed from the traditional concept of furniture, which, in addition to its humble utility and the idea

of delicately pleasing the eye, was its role as a faithful servant to often richly brocaded raiment, and a

placid testimonial to a peaceful and pious existence transmitted from generation to generation134!”

During the Exposition of 1925, with the notable exception of Le Corbusier’s pavilion of L’Esprit Nouveau,

it still generally seemed to be just a question of modernizing the dwelling by creating modern furnishings

(in the meaning of “up-to-date”). These are still merely modernization through simplification. Whether

these innovations drew from the visual vocabulary of the classical heritage, or were interpreted through the

Eileen Gray, collage T3-10, drawing room of the apartment of Madame Mathieu Lévy, rue de Lota, circa 1931.

Jacques Doucet, 1925-1927.

The studio of the couturier Jacques Doucet fitted out by the architect Paul Ruaud

and decorator Pierre Legrain, 33 rue Saint-James in Neuilly-sur-Seine, circa 1925.

Canvas by Matisse above the chest by Legrain. Photograph published in L’Illustration, May 1930.

60 61

filters of individual sensibilities, no one − except Le Corbusier − was proposing a genuine reformulation

of the dwelling taking modern living as its yardstick. He was the only one daring to start with a tabula rasa

capable of integrating the technical innovations that were revolutionizing modern everyday life, with each

passing year bringing a slew of new ones. These innovations (which were opening the path to the modern

dwelling as we conceive of it today) were not appealing to public tastes. They were badly perceived, even

objects of contempt. This attitude was almost exclusively a French one. As proof, the bedroom-boudoir for

Monte Carlo by Eileen Gray (1923), which concentrated all the thinking she had done for the apartment of

Madame Lévy in the rue de Lota, was characterized by the French critics as the “cabinet of the daughter

of Dr. Caligari135,” whereas the Dutch magazine Wendingen dedicated an article filled with praise of her

creations; which in turn attracted the attention of the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud.

of materials, these are the main aesthetic concerns of these experimenters. Thus, according to them, the

furniture of today will offer a better fit with all these scientific applications we now live with and which

have become inseparable from our desire to ensure comfort and good hygiene. And now we find ourselves

far removed from the traditional concept of furniture, which, in addition to its humble utility and the idea

of delicately pleasing the eye, was its role as a faithful servant to often richly brocaded raiment, and a

placid testimonial to a peaceful and pious existence transmitted from generation to generation134!”

During the Exposition of 1925, with the notable exception of Le Corbusier’s pavilion of L’Esprit Nouveau,

it still generally seemed to be just a question of modernizing the dwelling by creating modern furnishings

(in the meaning of “up-to-date”). These are still merely modernization through simplification. Whether

these innovations drew from the visual vocabulary of the classical heritage, or were interpreted through the

Eileen Gray, collage T3-10, drawing room of the apartment of Madame Mathieu Lévy, rue de Lota, circa 1931.

Jacques Doucet, 1925-1927.

The studio of the couturier Jacques Doucet fitted out by the architect Paul Ruaud

and decorator Pierre Legrain, 33 rue Saint-James in Neuilly-sur-Seine, circa 1925.

Canvas by Matisse above the chest by Legrain. Photograph published in L’Illustration, May 1930.