Edouard Cortes “Place du Tertre, Montmartre”
Source: Place du Tertre, Montmartre – this wonderful daytime scene in Montmartre by Edouard Cortes (1882-1969) is featured in David Klein’s Édouard Cortès Le Poete Parisien de la Peinture on page 183.
Place du Tertre, located just a few streets away from Sacré Coeur, is crowded with artists all vying to paint your portrait. It was Baron Haussmann who inadvertently created the Place du Tertre. After razing many working-class neighborhoods in central Paris, he unwittingly encouraged the development of Montmartre (which had been annexed to Paris in 1860). The metamorphosis of Montmartre from a country village into the home for hordes of artists and others who no longer had a place in Haussmann’s grandiose central Paris began around 1880. At the base of Montmartre, cabarets thrived and on the Place du Tertre intense artistic activity took place. Place du Tertre saw the artistic movements of Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism come and go. It is a reminder of the time when Montmartre was the center of modern art: many great painters including Picasso, Renoir, Braque, Dufy, Cézanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec painted here and often kept studios and living quarters in the adjacent streets. These days, despite the crush of constant tourists on the square, one can still discover that old-time Paris feeling here. (Monuments in Paris)