Among the most momentous relationships that Hemingway formed during his first months in Paris was his friendship with the avant-garde art collector and experimental modernist writer Gertrude Stein. In contrast to so many who found Stein's prose incomprehensible, Hemingway respected her professional expertise, and he readily accepted her as a mentor. From her he learned much about the rhythm of words and the power of repetition and unembellished direct statement. The friendship, however, had soured by late 1926, and the final chapter in the Hemingway-Stein relationship is a tale of pot-shots fired at each other in their writings.
Gertrude Stein 1874-1946
Jo Davidson (1883-1952)/
Terra-cotta, 1922-1923
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
