Snowcapped mountains, towering pine trees and a winding dirt road cover the dining room walls. Fluffy white clouds float above the kitchen cabinets. A waterfall painted onto a slender slice of wall ...

The self-taught artist Abraham Lincoln Walker worked in his basement on phantasmagorical paintings, discovered by the art world more than 30 years after his death.

When it opened in 1962, the bar was a hangout for writers such as Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It had lost some of its luster but is now being revived by ...