Bohemian Artists of Paris: Montmartre’s Rebel Quarter

Article Summary

What this article covers: Who the Bohemian Artists of Paris were, why they clustered on Montmartre between about 1870 and 1910, and which studios and cabarets you can still visit.

Who this is for: Travellers who want the art history behind the postcards, and readers researching Montmartre’s artists.

Key takeaway: Montmartre produced modern art because it was cheap and half-rural, outside Paris until 1860. The poverty was real and it shaped the work.

Expert insight: “I walked up to Place Emile-Goudeau expecting something grand and found a small sloping square with a fountain and a green shopfront, which is all that marks where Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. That gap between what the place looks like and what happened in it is Montmartre in one square. You have to bring the history with you.” , Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove

Quick facts:

• Montmartre was a separate village until annexed to Paris in 1860, which kept rents and wine cheap.
• Le Chat Noir, widely treated as the first modern cabaret, opened in 1881 under Rodolphe Salis.
• The Bateau-Lavoir studios at 13 Rue Ravignan burned down in May 1970 and were rebuilt in 1978.

Montmartre sits on a hill above the rest of Paris, and for about forty years that geography did something strange to French art. Painters who could not afford anywhere else moved up here, argued in cabarets and quietly pulled European painting apart. The hill deserves its own afternoon, and our guide to things to do across Paris covers the rest of the city. The Bohemian Artists of Paris are usually pictured through Toulouse-Lautrec posters and red windmills, which is a shame, because the real story involves unheated attics, a working vineyard and a village that had only recently stopped being one.

Who Were the Bohemian Artists of Paris?

The Bohemian Artists of Paris were painters, poets, printmakers and cabaret performers who lived cheaply and deliberately outside respectable French society, mostly between the 1840s and the First World War. “Bohemian” was not a compliment when it was first used. It came from a mistaken belief that Romani travellers had arrived from the kingdom of Bohemia, and Parisians applied it to students and artists who dressed badly, kept odd hours and refused ordinary careers. The artists took the insult and wore it.

From Insult to Identity

By the 1850s the word had shifted meaning. Refusing a career in law or commerce to paint instead had become a recognisable stance rather than simply a failure, and the Bohemian Artists of Paris built a shared culture around it: irregular hours, communal meals, shared studios, pooled money and a genuine contempt for the official Salon system. That contempt mattered artistically. Rejecting state-approved subjects and finishes is what pushed painters outdoors, into cabarets and eventually into abstraction.

Why the Hill Rather Than the Left Bank

Earlier bohemians had gathered in the Latin Quarter, and you can still trace that older layer in the 5th arrondissement. By the 1870s that area had become expensive. Montmartre had not. It was steep, badly paved, half agricultural and full of buildings nobody wanted, which is precisely what a generation of broke painters needed. The move north was economic before it was ever romantic.

How Montmartre Became the Home of Bohemian Art

Two things made Montmartre available to artists: its late annexation into Paris, and its politics. The hill was a separate commune with its own council, its own vineyards, its own windmills and, importantly, its own tax status. Wine produced there escaped the city excise duty, which is why the slopes filled with taverns and open-air dance halls long before any painter arrived. When the Bohemian Artists of Paris moved in, they were moving into an existing drinking culture rather than inventing one.

Annexation, Cheap Rent and the Last Vineyard

Montmartre was absorbed into Paris in 1860. Housing spread, the vineyards shrank and the old village economy collapsed, leaving a district that was physically part of the capital but socially still on its edge. One patch of vines survived by accident and design: in 1933 the illustrator Francisque Poulbot and a group of local artists blocked a building development by planting the Clos Montmartre on Rue Saint-Vincent, exploiting a French rule that prevents construction on a vineyard. It is still owned by the City of Paris, and the Fete des Vendanges has marked the harvest every October since 1934.

The Commune and the Rebel Reputation

In March 1871 the hill was where the Paris Commune began, when National Guard cannon parked on the butte were seized by residents refusing to surrender them. The rising was crushed within months, but the district kept a reputation for anti-authoritarian politics that lasted a generation, and it drew anarchists, satirists and pamphleteers alongside the painters. That political edge fed directly into the cabaret songs and posters the Bohemian Artists of Paris produced.

The Artists Who Defined the Quarter

No single movement owns Montmartre. Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Fauves and Cubists all passed through within about thirty years, often sharing the same streets and the same landlords. What follows is not a ranking, just the figures whose Montmartre addresses you can still find, which makes them the useful ones for anyone planning a visit. The Musee de Montmartre holds work by most of them and is the best single stop for context.

Henri De Toulouse-lautrec and the Poster

Toulouse-Lautrec did something no other painter in the quarter managed: he made commercial advertising into serious art. His lithographic posters for the Moulin Rouge and for performers like La Goulue and Jane Avril flattened space, cropped figures at the edges and used blocks of colour in ways that owed as much to Japanese prints as to French painting. Because posters were pasted on walls rather than hung in salons, his work reached people who would never enter a gallery, and it fixed the visual image of the Bohemian Artists of Paris for everyone since.

Picasso and the Bateau-Lavoir

Picasso rented a studio in the Bateau-Lavoir in spring 1904 and stayed until 1909. The building, at 13 Rue Ravignan on Place Emile-Goudeau, had been a piano factory before it was carved into cheap studios divided by thin wood and plaster partitions. The poet Max Jacob gave it the nickname, which translates roughly as “laundry boat”, because the ramshackle structure creaked like a barge. Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Kees van Dongen, Amedeo Modigliani and Guillaume Apollinaire all worked or drank there, and Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon inside it in 1907. A fire gutted the original in May 1970, leaving only the facade; the replacement built in 1978 still houses around 25 studios, though you can only see the exterior.

Suzanne Valadon, the Artist the Story Usually Forgets

Valadon is the most interesting omission from most accounts of the Bohemian Artists of Paris. She began as a circus acrobat, then modelled for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, then taught herself to paint and became a serious painter of nudes in her own right, working from a studio at 12 Rue Cortot that is now part of the Musee de Montmartre and has been recreated room by room. Her son, Maurice Utrillo, painted the Montmartre streetscapes that thousands of visitors now buy as prints. Any version of this history that lists her only as a model is incomplete.

Van Gogh, Degas and Renoir

Vincent van Gogh lived on Rue Lepic with his brother Theo from 1886 to 1888, and his palette lightened sharply during those two years as he absorbed Impressionist colour. Edgar Degas worked nearby and used the hill’s dance halls and cafes as material. Renoir painted Bal du Moulin de la Galette in 1876 at the windmill dance hall of the same name, which is still standing on Rue Lepic. Between them these three cover the transition the Bohemian Artists of Paris made from painting outdoor light to painting nightlife.

Cabarets, Cafes and the Bohemian Night

The cabarets were not entertainment venues that happened to have artists in them. They were the working infrastructure of the scene: the places where poems were tested, posters commissioned, songs written, politics argued and reputations made. Understanding them explains more about the Bohemian Artists of Paris than any account of individual careers does.

Le Chat Noir, 1881

Rodolphe Salis opened Le Chat Noir on Boulevard de Rochechouart in 1881 and it is generally treated as the first modern cabaret. The formula was new: a room where the host insulted the customers, where poets read from the floor, where a shadow-puppet theatre ran satirical shows, and where the audience was mixed by class rather than sorted by it. It published its own journal, gave the Bohemian Artists of Paris a paying outlet for illustration work, and produced the Steinlen poster that is still sold on every corner of the hill.

The Moulin Rouge

The Moulin Rouge opened in 1889 at the foot of the hill in Pigalle, and it was a commercial operation from the start rather than an artists’ hangout. Its red windmill, its can-can and its willingness to mix aristocrats with laundry workers made it famous quickly, and Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters made it permanent. It marks the moment Montmartre’s bohemian reputation started becoming a product.

Au Lapin Agile

Au Lapin Agile on Rue des Saules is the survivor. Smaller and scruffier than the Moulin Rouge, it was where Picasso, Modigliani and Apollinaire drank, and it still operates as a chansons venue in the same low pink building. Its painted sign by Andre Gill, showing a rabbit leaping out of a saucepan, gave the place its name through a pun on “le lapin a Gill”.

What Happened to Bohemian Montmartre

The scene did not end dramatically. It priced itself out. As Montmartre grew famous, rents rose, tourists arrived, and the painters who had come for cheap attics started leaving for cheaper ones elsewhere. By around 1910 the centre of gravity had shifted south across the Seine to Montparnasse, and the Bohemian Artists of Paris who stayed were increasingly working for the visitors rather than for each other.

The Move to Montparnasse

Montparnasse offered what Montmartre had offered thirty years earlier: low rents, big cheap studios and no respectability to protect. Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and a large cohort of immigrant painters later grouped as the Ecole de Paris settled there, and the cafe terraces of the Boulevard du Montparnasse replaced the hilltop cabarets as the place to be seen. Montmartre kept the name and lost the artists.

Sacre-Coeur and the Changing Skyline

Construction of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica began in 1875 and finished in 1914, and its white domes now define the hill from every direction. It was built partly as an act of national penance after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which many Montmartre residents took as a deliberate rebuke to their own district. The result is a strange overlay of piety on top of a quarter famous for the opposite, and it is covered in more depth in our guide to Paris churches worth visiting.

Visiting Montmartre Today: Tracing the Bohemian Artists of Paris

Montmartre is busy, steep and much photographed, but the addresses that matter are close together and mostly free to look at. A slow walk of two to three hours covers almost all of them. Go early; Place du Tertre is manageable at nine in the morning and unpleasant by noon.

A Walking Route That Follows the Artists

Start at Abbesses metro on Line 12 and climb to Place Emile-Goudeau for the Bateau-Lavoir shopfront, where a window display shows photographs of the original building. Continue up Rue Ravignan to Place du Tertre, then cut to Rue Cortot for the Musee de Montmartre, which occupies the 17th-century house where Renoir, Valadon, Dufy and Emile Bernard all worked and includes Valadon’s recreated studio and the Renoir gardens. From there it is a short downhill walk to the Clos Montmartre vines on Rue Saint-Vincent and Au Lapin Agile opposite. Finish on Rue Lepic at the Moulin de la Galette, passing Van Gogh’s old address on the way.

Practical Notes for the Visit

The hill is genuinely steep, and the funicular beside the Sacre-Coeur steps takes a standard metro ticket if the climb is a problem. The Musee de Montmartre charges admission and is open daily; the Clos Montmartre vineyard is normally closed except for occasional tours, most of them clustered around the October harvest festival. The Bateau-Lavoir cannot be entered at all. Portrait artists in Place du Tertre will approach you and prices are negotiable, so agree one before anyone starts drawing. For where to base yourself, our notes on central Paris accommodation cover the trade-off between staying on the hill and staying nearer the centre.

Fitting Montmartre Into a Short Trip

Half a day is enough for the artists’ route, which leaves time for something contrasting. If you only have one day, our 24 hours in Paris itinerary shows how to pair the hill with one central sight rather than three.

Readers coming over from Britain often build Montmartre into a day trip from London, though that is tight. You will be choosing between the hill and the Louvre, not doing both.

On timing, our piece on the best season to visit Paris makes the case for late spring and early autumn. October has the added draw of the vineyard harvest festival.

Where Else the Bohemian Story Shows Up in Paris

Montmartre is the centre of the story but not the whole of it. Several other parts of the city hold pieces of the same history, and they make good follow-on stops if the story has caught your interest.

Museums and Galleries

The Musee de Montmartre is the specialist collection, but the wider city holds far more of the work itself. Our roundup of Paris museums and galleries covers the smaller institutions that get overlooked.

For context rather than canvases, the Musee Carnavalet is the place to understand the Paris these artists were reacting against. It is free to enter and rarely crowded.

The Neighbourhoods That Came Before and After

The Marais and the older squares of the 4th arrondissement show the aristocratic Paris that bohemia defined itself against. The contrast in one afternoon is instructive.

Place des Vosges is the clearest single example of that older, moneyed city, built two centuries before anyone climbed the butte to paint.

For the view the painters were always trying to get above, our piece on the rooftops of Paris is worth a read before you climb the hill.

Montmartre on Screen

Film has done as much as painting to fix Montmartre in the popular imagination. Amelie is the obvious case, and our look at Paris through Amelie’s eyes traces the real cafes and shops the film used, several of them still trading.

More recent television has kept the cycle going. Our guide to Emily in Paris filming locations covers where the current wave of visitors is heading.

Planning Your Own Montmartre Art Walk

The Bohemian Artists of Paris left a hill that rewards preparation. Know which door was Picasso’s, which vines Poulbot saved and which cabaret sign is a pun, and a crowded tourist quarter turns into something you can actually read. Do the walk early, budget two to three hours, and treat the Musee de Montmartre as the anchor rather than an afterthought.

ConnollyCove covers destinations and cultural stories from Ireland to the rest of the world, and our Paris coverage runs from the hill down to the catacombs under the city. For more on the Bohemian Artists of Paris and the wider city, browse our Paris guides or watch our travel videos on the ConnollyCove YouTube channel.

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