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Now: The exhibit ``Americans in Paris: 1860-1900,'' recently opened to rave reviews at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

``Just about any artist worth the name wanted to go to Paris after the Civil War, and hundreds did,'' wrote jody feinberg for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. `` For the first time, the best of their paintings have been gathered from museums and private collectors to create an exhibit ... It's a show of stunning paintings that tells the story of an important period in American art.''

Then: One of those hundreds of artists who headed to Paris in those years after the Civil War -- 20 years after in this case -- was S. Francis Holman of Attleboro. His life there was the kind of stuff Hemingway's novels were made of -- as we have noted in earlier stories, Holman was a champion fencer, a bon vivant and as an ambulance driver in World War I was heroic enough to earn one of the French government's highest medals of valor, even though he was in his late 50s or early 60s at the time.

Had he been more industrious and done less bon-vivanting, one of his relatives once suggested to me, he might have achieved true greatness as an artist. Be that as it may, he did gain considerable success; clippings variously described him as ``world renowned'' and ``famous for his paintings of royalty and Norwegian and Italian landscapes.''

While his is not a big enough name for the BMFA exhibit, its stars -- Whistler and Sargent -- were among his friends. And his home in Paris was very much a part of the salon society from which the Americans in Paris drew their energy and inspiration and fueled their competitive fires. Indeed, his roommate, Charles Holman-Black, became an enduring symbol of the ``Americans in Paris'' era. Black was an opera singer who declared Holman his adopted brother and took on the hyphenated name as his legal signature. Together, and for a time also with the sculptor George Grey Barnard, they lived in a stately home at 16 Avenue De Breteuil. They traveled in a set that included, along with Whistler and Sargent, Ignace Paderewski, Saint-Saens, Faure, Bouguereau Carolus Duran, Vincent D'Indy. And others with intriguing names like Prince Roland Bonaparte.

Holman died in 1930. Holman-Black carried on and in 1937 The Paris Herald Tribune, the Boston Post and the Attleboro Sun ran stories identifying him variously as the oldest American in Paris or the American who had lived there longer than any other. He had been making his home continuously in the city since 1886.

In 1940, he was in dire straits. The United States government was demanding tax payments; the French government was warning him that the annuities he lived on would not be paid to him outside the country and the Germans were about to invade. How the story turned out for the 87-year-old man I can't tell '85 but he did get a reported 100 of S. Francis Holman's paintings out of the country and into the hands of the Attleboro Art Association.

In between: Holman-Black kept up a long correspondence with friends he made in Attleboro, apparently through visits to the Holman family manse at 7 Holman St., which faced Pleasant Street on the block between Holman and Emory streets.

There are also stories about Whistler, Sargent and others from the school of American painters visiting there; I could not confirm this from the records at hand. But this was the home where S. Francis's mother, Charlotte (Balcom) Holman first taught him to paint.

That was hardly the house's only claim to fame. It had been built in 1779, when it was part of an estate that stretched from the Pleasant Street of today to Forest Street. It was the parsonage for Second Congregational Church when the Rev. Nathan Holman served as pastor in the early 1800s. Later it was the post office for the East Village.

Through the 1960s, it was home to Holman's cousins Agnes and Ethel Balcom. Vacant after they left, it was eventually demolished.

From time to time, the Attleboro Museum mounts an exhibit of Holman's work. The next time they do, it'll be a good take-in. Meanwhile, ``Americans in Paris: 1860-1900,'' continues at the BMFA through Sept. 24. As we noted earlier, Holman's work is not part of it, but he was very much Attleboro's connection to the spirit of that time and place.

NOW, THEN and In Between is written by Mark Flanagan, Opinion page editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0335 or by e-mail to opinion@thesunchronicle.com.