William Edwards Cook - Expatriate Modernist

Expatriate Modernist

When Cook returned to Paris, he became somehow acquainted with Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas. Consequently, the three became close and loyal friends, in part because he frequently brought influential visitors to the Saturday evening soirees at Stein's apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, among them (as Stein reported later in her first autobiography) "a great many from Chicago, very wealthy stout ladies and equally wealthy tall good-looking thin ones." By way of her soirees and other events, Stein introduced Cook to scores of Modern-era artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jacques Lipchitz, Robert Graves, and so on.