Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein

The name Gertrude Stein conjures up the romanticized Paris of the 1920's. However, for almost two decades before that, Leo and Gertrude Stein had held court to writers and painters at 27, rue de Fleurus in a salon filled with the bright, bold canvases they were purchasing. Brilliant, voluble and profoundly insecure, brother and sister spent most of their lives shoring up their images, each helping to create the other. A complementary and devoted couple, eccentric and compelling, they were constantly together from childhood to adulthood. And then their mutual dependence proved too painful. Leo denounced his sister's work, denounced the painters he had once supported and, in 1914, denounced Paris for a life of uninterrupted solitude. This book presents a little-known but important angle on Gertrude Stein's life and provides a portrait of her gifted brother, Leo. It is the story of the relationship between a brother and a sister, which sheds light on a beguiling and complex couple.