Floyd Davis - Bar in Hôtel Scribe, Paris, 1944

Floyd Davis - Bar in Hôtel Scribe, Paris, 1944

1944, end of August: Paris was free again, the allies were pressing further the Wermacht toward Germany.

Hôtel Scribe (located between l'Opera and Place Vendôme: so downtown Paris that nothing else could express more accurately what downtown Paris means) had been the German press center during the Occupation; it was now hosting the Allied press headquarters. The red flag with black Swastika was now down, replaced by the banners of the Allies: Stars and Strips, Scythe and Hammer (the Cold War was to begin only a few years later), along with the French tricolor and the Union Jack.

So the bar of the hotel became a watering hole for the Allied war correspondents: the place where journalists coming from the front were chatting with the ones who were to go in mission.

Hemingway was among them: you can see him at the table in the low center. Robert Capa was also there.

The artist who depicted the bar was Floyd Davis: the guy was working for Life magazine.

Close-up on Ernest Hemingway

Close Up on Robert Capa

The painting is now at the National Portrait Gallery in DC, in the same room with portraits of great personalities from that epoch: generals, and scientists, and political leaders. So here they are, together Eisenhower, Oppenheimer, Einstein, Patton, Marshall, MacArthur, Churchill. Watch the video!





(American Art and Portraiture)

(Hemingway)