Cappiello, 1901.

Van Gogh, portrait of the Père Tanguy, 1887.

Now take the rue de la Tour des Dames. Vincent Van Gogh lived at number 8 on the fourth floor in 1890. He had taken refuge in his brother's apartment there for several months before leaving for Auvers-sur-Oise where he committed suicide on July 27th of the same year. Converted to absinthe by Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin, he spent many nights with them at the café Le Tambourin. Van Gogh whose dream was to have his works exhibited, wrote to his brother: “One day or another, I will find a way to do my own exhibition in a café.” These words are particularly significant and demonstrate the difficulty artists had showing their works as well as the important role the café played in the cultural life of the 19 th century.

As you reach rue St Georges, look up to the fourth floor of number 43. Perhaps you will get a glimpse of the Goncourt brothers on their balcony. They lived there from 1850 to 1868 observing and describing the lives of their contemporaries. Suffering from terrible headaches, they were in the habit of putting laudanum in their absinthe, a veritable “liquid hashish” to use their words

La Brasserie des Martyrs

Baudelaire was a regular customer of the Brasserie des Martyrs and as soon as he arrived, he would ask the waiter to remove the carafe of water on the table next to his. “I find the sight of water unbearable.” he would say gravely. He would order wine and quickly down four or five glasses or would absorb successively two or three absinthes with the same nonchalance.

At number 14, rue Clauzel, artists regularly crowded the shop of le Père Tanguy, the paint manufacturer and merchant for the Impressionists and the Nabis. His paints in tubes were the rage, for they gave the artists much greater freedom from their studios. When he arrived in Paris in March 1886, Vincent Van Gogh became a regular client of the shop where he met Cézanne and Emile Bernard. And Guy de Maupassant, famous author of short stories, lived at number 17.