Jules Pascin in the New World

On July 28, 1914, when the first World War broke out, the painter Jules Pascin was in London. One might have expected him to go back to Paris where he, the eternally restless, the “juif errant,” had a home of a sort, or at least a studio of his own, and where his fiancee, Hermine David was living. But he was fed up with Europe. Sooner or later, he knew, Bulgaria would remind him that he was still a subject of King Ferdinand and draft him into her army.But Pascin felt no loyalty to the King of Bulgaria. He was a subject only because by 1885, the year of his birth, the town of Vidin, originally Serbian, had been annexed by the Bulgarians. Pascin's father and grandfather had been supporters of the Obrenovich dynasty, the rulers of Serbia who, on their part, had been favorably disposed towards these enterprising grain merchants. His mother, however, was an Italian, though, like her husband, of Sefardi stock; a member of the distinguished Russo family, she came from Trieste, and had, therefore, been an Austria...