Christian Schmidt, painter - Toulouse - A custom painting for the Aux Six Soeurs bookstore in Toulouse

Artistic chronicle of Toulouse painters

Aux Six Soeurs 1945 HST par Christian Schmidt 160x130 cm (signé et daté)

Inv. coll. gf

The Aux Six Soeurs bookstore, located at 2 Place Saint-Etienne in Toulouse, was acquired and run by Geneviève Calvayrac from 1941, then taken over by her daughter Elizabeth in the 1970s, until its final closure in 2010. The bookstore has always retained its "original" appearance, which gave it a special charm, becoming an icon of the golden triangle of the pink city. The facade has not changed, with its wide arcaded windows and the inscription "Aux six soeurs" on the pediment.

I've known Elizabeth since middle school, and when I went to the bookstore as a child, I would happily look at this painting, which evoked for me the joys of family. It hung flush with the ceiling at the back of the second room of the store. I was 15-16 years old then and I thought to myself, "It would look great in my room!" I didn't despair that one day it would be in my home. I had to wait until 2023!

The Six Sisters Bookstore

A Toulouse brand that spanned the 20th century

In 1900, the Café Riche, located on the site of the future bookstore "Aux six soeurs," attracted all of Toulouse. In this chic Toulouse neighborhood, elegant ladies loyal to the five-au-clock crowd looked down on the gallants who came to sip their absinthe at the Café Riche. It was the Belle Époque, and stagecoaches roamed the streets.

The years passed and in the 1920s, the Café Riche closed shop. It was bought by Colonel Lamouille, who had just retired and who set up, in the Café's place, a bookstore specializing in religious matters with one idea in mind: that his bookstore be perpetuated by his daughters. He had SIX. Six daughters, Six sisters, the name was all there! But the favorite buyers were not interested in this "embarrassing" gift. Aging, the colonel then sold the sign and the place he had founded to a professional bookseller, Monsieur de Marcilly. When Monsieur de Marcilly left this world in 1941, the young and dynamic Geneviève Calvayrac, a scholar and passionate reader, bought the bookstore.

Until her death in 1971, assisted by her daughter, she never stopped making her bookstore a cutting-edge boutique presenting the latest published works, always in search of new releases. She read a lot and was thus able to advise her readers who listened to her "religiously". Her two saleswomen, Mademoiselle Dorléac and Madame Danjou, supported her in the heavy burden that bookselling represents for a free woman. Apart from literature, "Gen" sold missals, ecclesiastical books, pious images and art books, luxury stationery, gold fountain pens, diaries, icons on panels... It was the essential place in Toulouse for printing communion images, wedding and baptism invitations and practically the only place in the city where one could order business cards or letterheads for engraved papers. She had the engraving of the copper plates and the printing done by a Parisian engraver in the Latin Quarter.

Another highlight of the bookstore is its school supplies. Here too, when supermarkets didn't yet exist, and the inner suburbs of the first belt were still rural, people rushed to "Aux six soeurs" to fill the schoolbags of well-off toddlers. Notebooks, colored pencils, pens, educational games, or even children's books... "Aux six soeurs" offered excellent quality items, tastefully chosen by the owner. Let's not forget the postcard turnstile outside the store for tourists who could also buy postage stamps in the shop.

During the back-to-school period, the bookstore closed when there was no one left, sometimes until nightfall.

Christian Schmidt arrived in Toulouse in 1941. Close to artistic and literary circles, he painted for Geneviève Calvayrac an XXL painting representing children in the bookstore in both playful and studious attitudes and in a style very evocative of this post-war period. We see a mechanic, cubes, checkers and books... books!! David Coperfield, Bambi.. Since 1945, the painting remained hanging in the bookstore with its high ceilings, until its closure in 2010.

Christian Schmidt 1919-2003

Christian Schmidt (1920-2003)

Christian Schmidt est né au Maroc le 18 octobre 1920, jour de la Saint-Luc, protecteur des Peintres. Etudes à Strasbourg puis Paris ou il fréquente l’atelier du maître Gromaire qu’il admire.Rentrant des camps de prisonnier en 1943, il rejoint sa famille repliée à Toulouse. Résistance, Gestapo, Mauthausen : médaille militaire, Croix de Guerre. Mais on connaît surtout Schmidt le peintre.En 1945, c’est l’aventure du ‘chariot’ avec Hugon, Yankel, Goedgebuer, Vernette, Teuillières, Pagès … une histoire d’amitié.En 1950, il est professeur aux Beaux-Arts. Il crée en même temps son premier Atelier privé ou, pendant près de trente ans, il regroupe une vingtaine d’élèves, ‘les peintres du mardi', puis l’Atelier 208, plus largement ouvert.Pédagogue généreux mais très exigeant, ouvert à toutes les tendances pourvu que l’on ne triche pas, il a su créer dans ses Ateliers un climat de complicité incomparables ou se sont forgées de solides amitiés. Individualiste, il savait cependant écouter les autres, les comprendre et les guider sur les chemins de l’Art sans imposer sa vision personnelle : ‘je suis là pour vous aider à trouver votre propre signature’.C’était un homme de grande culture, le théâtre faisait aussi parti du personnage. C’était sa seconde nature et nul n’a été surpris de l’entendre à la ‘cave poésie’, chez son ami René Gouzenne, dire des textes de Tchekhov ou de Beckett. Il fut également le premier directeur du Centre Culturel de Toulouse, compétent et imaginatif (1964-1972). Responsable pendant douze ans du Cabinet d’Esthétique de la ville, il se bat pour la restauration de la brique et de l’architecture d’origine dans les quartiers historiques.Pour achever le portrait esquissé d’un homme qu’il fallait bien connaitre pour lui accorder estime et amitié, on peut citer cette réflexion de Marie-Louise Roubaud : ‘Chez Schmidt, l’anecdote cruelle cache le silence un peu hautain des Stoïques qui veulent faire croire que rien ne les touche, alors qu’un souffle d’indifférence les blesse à mort’. Stoïque, il l’a été jusqu’au bout de sa vie pour tenir tête à la maladie, le pinceau à la main.C’est à Bages (66), en 2003, que s’achèvera son parcours, un site qu’il aimait particulièrement et qui lui a inspiré quelques-unes de ses meilleures toiles. Lucette Roubinet

Links

The Midi Dispatch 2010

https://www.espritsnomades.net/arts-plastiques/christian-schmidt-par-henry-lhong/

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