Oldgreytravel first became aware of the Lapin Agile while acting in a production of a play by the legendary Steve Martin “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” The play was set in the eponymous Montmartre cabaret bar where a collection of local “characters” gathered to witness the seismic meeting of Picasso and Einstein in 1904. While the meeting of the two C20 giants is unlikely to have ever taken place, the Lapin Agile was a real Montmartre cabaret bar and Picasso a frequent visitor along with many other artists and intellectuals who made up the Montmartre milieu at the dawn of the C20.
Sometime later, oldgreytravel was in Paris overnight and no option seemed more enticing than a trip to the Lapin Agile. While in Montmartre, it is located well away from the tourist hotspots of this once Bohemian quarter. Indeed, it is located opposite a vineyard on a quiet cobbled street of residential buildings.
The Lapin Agile has been in existence in some form since 1860 but only assumed its current persona in 1875 when the artist Andre Gill painted the sign that was to suggest its permanent name. His picture of a rabbit jumping out of a cooking pot eventually led to the bar becoming known as Le Lapin Agile – the nimble rabbit. In the early C20, the Lapin Agile was bought by the impresario Aristide Bruant to save it from demolition. He soon sold it on to the legendary Frederic Gerard. It quickly became the favourite haunt of artists and writers such as Picasso, Modigliani, Apollinaire and Utrillo.
Indeed, Picasso was such a regular visitor that one of his most famous paintings, Au Lapin Agile, was set in the bar showing the artist in a pierrot’s costume, his lover Germaine Pichot and Frederic, with guitar, in the background. Frederic had commissioned the painting in return for free food and drinks for the artist and it was exhibited in the bar from 1905 to 1912 when it was sold to a German collector. The painting went on to be one of the most expensive paintings ever sold, £47 million pounds at auction in New York in 1992. It now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Lapin Agile still exists, little changed over the years, and now presents a vigorous programme of chanson music by local singers and performers in a tiny wood panelled room, the walls covered in pictures and prints, a single upright piano and simple wooden tables and chairs. Entry (in 2023) is a flat rate 35 euros which provides you with a small glass of unpalatable cherry brandy and an evening of overpowering nostalgia as local artists belt out their traditional French songs to a mixed gathering of tourists and locals. The evening certainly has to be one of the most unusual that oldgreytravel has spent and, while his love of chanson is limited, the overall atmosphere and bonhomie of the place is infectious and it certainly shows a different side of Paris to the more conventional tourist nightspots.
The Lapin Agile is located in north Montmartre near the Lamarck-Caulaincourt metro station. Only cash is accepted as payment, but reservations can be made in advance via the internet. Check the website for details.
