Square Berlioz

1886–1927 · Virkested

Paris

1911–1914

The Ballets Russes, Diaghilev and Isadora Duncan

Between 1911 and 1914 he attends performances of the Ballets Russes, dines with their director Sergei Diaghilev and with the American dancer Isadora Duncan, and frequents the Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge in their heyday.

1914

Mobilised at the outbreak of the First World War

After the outbreak of war in August 1914 he is briefly mobilised as a highway guard, soon released from duty, and returns to painting.

August 1917

Commission for a mural for the café Le Grand Teddy

Back in Paris, he receives a commission from the architect Francis Jourdain for a mural for the fashionable Paris café Le Grand Teddy; other accounts date the commission to 1918.

1917–1924

Summers at Vaucresson

From 1917 to 1924 he spends every summer at Vaucresson, in a house rented with his mother, and paints a series of landscapes of the area.