Sunday, December 31, 2017 - New Year's Eve - dawned cool and cloudy. We planned to visit two museums before returning to our hotel to nap in preparation for a New Year's Eve dinner cruise. Our first stop was the Musee d'Orsay.
The Musée d'Orsay is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. As soon as we entered the building, we went straight to the top floor to gaze out of the clock tower.
From our vantage point, we could see all the way to Montmartre, a nieghborhood primarily known for its artistic history, the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit, and an infamous nightclub district. Many artists had studios or worked in or around Montmartre, including Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Suzanne Valadon, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Vincent van Gogh. Montmartre is also the setting for several hit films, including Moulin Rouge.
We began our tour of Musee d'Orsay on the fifth floor. With audio guide in ear, we began our journey through the history of the impressionist movement. We spent several hours listening to the museum curator talk about the paintings and the artists who painted them. Deciding on which photos to include in the blog was hard. We thought this painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926) called Luncheon on the Grass would be a good example of some of the monumental works on display. It is so huge he must have stood on a ladder to paint it! What is displayed is only a small part of the original work, but the other panels were lost. Monet painted it in homage to Manet's work of the same name, but we'll let you do the research to find the original Manet painting.
We also wanted to include Monet's "Water Lily Numpheas Pond." Monet loved his garden and created a number of variations on this theme. Monet’s gardens and paintings show a fascination with the effects of time, daylight and weather on a landscape.
After being impressed by the impressionists on the fifth floor, we worked our way down to the second floor studios. The view down and across the great hall is impressive. The building itself is a work or art.
Like Rembrandt and Goya, Vincent van Gogh often used himself as a model; he produced over forty-three self-portraits, paintings or drawings in ten years. Like the old masters, he observed himself critically in a mirror. The most striking aspect of this painting - no matter where we were in the studio - was that his eyes followed you. David has never seen a blue as brilliant as the robin's egg blue of the background, for which this photo does not do justice.
It was tough picking just one Van Gogh, but we settled on Starry Night Over the Rhône (September 1888), one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings of Arles at nighttime. It was painted at a spot on the bank of the Rhône that was only a one or two-minute walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine which Van Gogh was renting at the time. The night sky and the effects of light at night provided the subject for some of his more famous paintings, including his at-least-equally famous, "The Starry Night."
This sculpture by Rodin in the Musee d'Orsay caught our eye, as we planned to visit the Rodin Museum after lunch. Rodin was chosen to create a monument to Balzac, a famous writer. Apparently, his benefactors were not pleased with the result, but it seems to convey the convulsive spirit of Balzac. We looked forward to seeing the final bronze sculpture and learning more at the Rodin Museum after this.
After yet another amazing lunch at yet another cute little Parisian cafe, we walked over to the Rodin Museum. The museum is housed in the former Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds. Rodin used the Hôtel Biron as his workshop from 1908 and subsequently donated his entire collection of sculptures (along with paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir that he had acquired) to the French Government on the condition that they turn the buildings into a museum dedicated to his works.
Pictured below are The Three Shades (Les Trois Ombres). The over-life size group was initially made of three independent figures in 1899. Later on, Rodin replaced one hand in the figures to fuse them together, in the same form as the smaller version. The figures originally pointed to the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here") from Canto III of the Dante's Inferno.
After Victor Hugo’s death in 1885, it was decided to erect a monument in his honor. Rodin was awarded the commission in 1889. The sculptor chose to depict Victor Hugo in exile, seated among the rocks of Guernsey, his arm outstretched as if to calm the waves. It was an image both of the poet lost in contemplation and of the champion of the Republican cause.
As we walked around the museum, we could follow the creative process as it proceeded from the early model pictured above to the final bronze below. Because this museum was Rodin's studio, there were a number of "works in progress" where you could see the progression of a piece from idea to execution.
Now we came back to Balzac. As mentioned above, Rodin was chosen to create a monument to Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) a famous French novelist and playwright.The sculptor embarked on an extensive campaign of research, searching everywhere for evidence of Balzac's characteristics. Andre Fotainas wrote, "In this powerful statue, its body trembling in the folds of the robe, sleeves empty, Balzac stands with his huge head thrown back, alert like a wild animal, drinking in with eyes, nostrils, lips, and scenting the swirling rumour, the fever of the human comedy."
When the plaster was exhibited at the 1898 Salon, the critics went wild, pouring scorn on the formless block. They compared it to a toad in a sack, a statue still wrapped, a block of salt caught in a shower. They nicknamed it the menhir (the snowman). The Société refused to accept this work that broke with all the traditional conventions for a commemorative monument, and that ignored the requirement for a realistic portrait. And so Rodin kept the statue, returned the money, and refused all offers to buy it. It was not until 1939 that a bronze cast was erected in Paris.
Our visit to Rodin Museum certainly gave us a lot to think about.
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ReplyDeleteThe director chose to tell about the life of the sculptor August Rodin from a different perspective. The film begins in the middle of the sculptor's life. After a difficult period, he acquired a positive reputation around his work, and the French government invites work inspired by Dante. director successfully reconstructs the complex relationship with his colleague, lover, and confidante - Camille Claudel. The film has all the ingredients for success - passion, love, and tension, so I do not agree with the low grade received by the film. In conclusion: I think the film met expectations, was true to the original, focused on the processes surrounding the artist's life.
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