Letter from Marie Laurencin, Châtelguyon, to Paul Rosenberg, 1951 September 22 : autograph manuscript signed.

She was glad to hear from him and tells him she'll be back in Paris the following week, because of problems with her apartment. She needs to reoccupy it. The Income Tax department wants her to pay the property tax for Etienne de Beaumont, which is in arrears. She has been to see the tax agents who reassured her and do not understand why, as owner of the apartment, she cannot return to it. The cure is doing her and Suzanne [Moreau] a lot of good. Before leaving for Auvergne, they were at the Benedictine Abbey [l'Abbaye des Benedictines de la rue Monsieur, in Paris] and saw the nuns' cells being built and says that if the abbey were in a milder climate, she wouldn't hesitate to join it. The cold is her worst enemy, even preventing her from thinking and writing. She can paint, though. She is in admiration of the [sacred art] campaign of Father [Marie-Alain] Couturier and his paintings. She's painted a small panel with Suzanne and a few flowers, and some blue. She says it's fairly close to "our" Christian doctrine. She says she finds this kind of abstract demagogy strange--how they were able to have [Marcel] Duchamp, [Jacques] Villon, etc., paint. She ends by saying she needs to write to Madame René Gutman.