Villa America, Sara, and Gerald Murphy’s home in Antibes looked down on La Garoupe, where they spread oriental carpets on the sand and drank wine and cold Veuve Cliquot. They were prodigious drinkers, but what they ate was a mystery.
During the 1920s, their home was a destination for artists, writers, musicians, Parisian socialites, glitterati, memorably Pablo and Olga Picasso, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, and Cole Porter. Eventually, Fitzgerald used Antibes, especially the crowd at t Villa America for Tender is the Night (1937). The Murphys were not pleased. Picasso befriended the Murphys and painted Sara as Seated Woman with Arms Folded (1923). Decades later, Picasso began a themed series, La plage á la Garoupe, in 1955, which must be his memories of picnicking with the Murphys.
Pablo Picasso.La plage á la Garoupe, oil on canvas. Private Collection
Featured Image: They gathered under striped umbrellas. Sara Murphy, Olga Picasso, Pablo Picasso (in the black fedora). La Garoupe. 1923-1925? Collection of Honoria Murphy Donnelly. Gerald and Sara Murphy Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
See Calvin Tomkins. Living Well Is the Best Revenge. New York: Viking Press,1972; Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter. Found Meals of the Lost Generation: Recipes and Anecdotes from 1920s Paris. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.