Castaing, born in 1894, was, along with her husband
Marcellin���she considered their forty year marriage her
greatest work���a cultural omnivore in Paris during the
1920s. ���Marcellin���s new position on the staff of Floreal,
a cultural review of art, literature and theater, thrust the
Castaings into the heart of Paris���s exhilarating art scene.���
The hub of their world was the Montparnasse restaurant
La Rotonde, patronized by Modigliani, Matisse, Chagall,
Braque and Soutine. The latter became Madeleine���s
favorite artist, collecting his work a lifelong passion; she
bought up every canvas she could find.
But glittering and charmed as her Parisian life was,
Castaing���s deeper love was for an abandoned
Neoclassical country house with a tree growing through
the roof which she had first seen as a school girl. This was
Leves, which Madeleine and Marcellin bought in 1924
and lived in exclusively from 1928 to 1933, intermittently
until 1940 when it was requisitioned by the Germans.
Madeleine reclaimed the house in 1949, buying it back
from a farmers��� union with money she earned from her
antiques shop in the rue Jacob.
���[S]he decided to completely redecorate and refurnish
it with the intent that every room recall and harmonize
with the landscape.��� She combed flea markets in search,
not of quality, but of what she called the ���secret life��� of
HYLAND
