I had an ambitious day planned & wanted to do two more museums that day, as this was my last day of my 4-day pass that I bought. Musée d’Orsay & L’Orangerie were supposed to be close in proximity to each other, so I knew with careful planning, I could probably do them both.
I approached Musée d’Orsay by studying the map of exhibits & basically choosing to go to see only the works of artists that I knew : Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh and the sculpture wings (that included Rodin, Claudel & Belleuse-Carrier). The rooms are not set up in order, so the map is really essential. I enjoyed my selective visit very much, the museum was not too packed & I finished in the time that I had wanted to. I also ran into some really cool exhibits of modern art furniture and some objets d'art. At the end, I even got to check out the model of the city under a glass floor, the cross sections of models of the Opera house and some exhibits in the stairwells of the museum, some on the architects & artists that created the building itself.
I had to go through the Jardins de Tuilleries to get to L’Orangerie – it was a sunny but overcast day, so my pix didn’t turn out that well. This museum is magical, as it houses 2 oval shaped rooms with 4 huge murals of Monet’s Nympheas (water lillies) in each. There are benches in the middle of the room & many people just sit on them for hours, drinking in the beauty of the paintings. Downstairs were a couple of other interesting exhibits : one called Kirili et les Nympheas, who’s work is inspired by Monet`s Nympheas. Check it out:
There was also an exhibit about famed art collector/tycoon Paul Guillaume, who is considered founder of this museum, as he had planned to open one to display all of his collection, but died at 45, and left all of his collection to his wife Domenica, with instructions to give it all to the Louvre. However, she sold most of the stuff, kept what she wanted, and remarried some miner millionaire Jean Walter. There are reproductions of their apartment behind glass, complete with tiny little reproductions of the paintings!
She adopted a son & then was accused of murdering him. She was never found guilty & it was believed she paid off the State with the art in exchange for her immunity. It wasn’t really clear to me on how the museum got started from all of this, but it seems they got back many of these works to display here.
I met Shawn at Le Centre Pompidou (a proper meeting this time!) and we shared a half a sandwich before going in. It took him awhile to get used to the modern art concept, but once he started snapping pictures, he was enjoying everything around us with an open mind. There were more salles noires, one with Little Miss Muffet and the spider involved (pretty creepy!). We were disappointed to have to leave at 9pm, as we had expected it to be open later on Thursdays.
It had rained (for the first time since Sunday AM!) while we were in there, but it had stopped when we went outside. It was still overcast & had cooled off a lot. We stopped at Le Cavalier Bleu for a quick light dinner & had delicious meal salads – Shawn’s had tuna & green beans in it, mine had a bunch of stuff, including potato salad & green beans & it was served with smoked salmon on toast.
No comments:
Post a Comment